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Ganymede · Crater · 77th largest named feature

Hershef

Egyptian ram-headed god.

What Hershef is

Hershef is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Ganymede, 120 km across, centred at 47.4° N, 90.6° E. It is the 77th largest named feature on Ganymede and the 19th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Egyptian ram-headed god. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2000, under the theme it applies to every crater on Ganymede. Of the 129 features of this class catalogued on Ganymede, the naming categories run Egypt (42), Assyro-Babylonian (30), Phoenician (18), Sumerian (16).

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
120 km
about the width of Yellowstone
Coordinates
47.4° N, 90.6° E
Planetocentric, on Ganymede
Name approved
2000
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Egypt
Africa

What it would take to settle Hershef

Ganymede scores 55 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 47.4° N, 90.6° E.

Settlement difficulty here
59.4/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Ganymede overall
55
4.4 harder than the median site
Ranked
150th
of 196 named places on Ganymede

What this spot has going for it is water same as everywhere else on this world. What works against it is radiation geometry inside the open-field polar cap, where the plasma gets down.

Computed from Hershef'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 Ganymede (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Ganymede 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 crater features on Ganymede

All 129 craters on Ganymede — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.