라이브
Europa · Macula · 77th largest named feature

Cyclades Macula

Islands where Rhadamanthys reigned.

What Cyclades Macula is

Cyclades Macula is a macula — a dark spot — on Europa, 107 km across, centred at 62.5° S, 168.7° E. It is the 77th largest named feature on Europa and the 2nd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Islands where Rhadamanthys reigned. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1997, under the theme it applies to every macula on Europa.

Feature class
a dark spot
Diameter
107 km
about the width of Yellowstone
Coordinates
62.5° S, 168.7° E
Planetocentric, on Europa
Name approved
1997
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Greek
Europe

What it would take to settle Cyclades Macula

Europa scores 60.9 as a world. That number is the same for every square metre of it — but sunlight, water, radiation and the ground under your feet are not. This is the same question asked at 62.5° S, 168.7° E.

Settlement difficulty here
62.8/ 100
Typical for this world
Europa overall
60.9
1.9 harder than the median site
Ranked
111th
of 129 named places on Europa

What this spot has going for it is water same as everywhere else on this world. What works against it is sunlight 46% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Europa gets.

Computed from Cyclades Macula's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 84% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 2 axes were dropped as not applicable to Europa (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Europa and are already counted in the world's own index, not again here.

What this cannot see: elevation. Slope, local shadowing and the polar “peaks of eternal light” — ridge tops near the poles of a barely tilted world that catch sun almost continuously while a crater floor kilometres away never does — need a terrain model this does not have. Where a real mission targets a pole, that is usually why.

What is next to it

The largest macula features on Europa