Ran Colles
What Ran Colles is
Ran Colles is a collis — a small hill or knob — on Venus, 400 km across, centred at 1.0° N, 163.0° E in the Rusalka Planitia quadrangle. It is the 489th largest named feature on Venus and the 10th largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Scandinavian sea goddess. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2003, under the theme it applies to every collis on Venus. Of the 16 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Latin (1), Russia (1), China (1), Roman (1).
What it would take to settle Ran Colles
Venus scores 43 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 1.0° N, 163.0° E.
What this spot has going for it is sunlight — 100% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Venus gets. What works against it is water — same as everywhere else on this world.
Computed from Ran Colles's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 74% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 2 axes were dropped as not applicable to Venus (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Venus 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 collis features on Venus
All 16 colles on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.