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Venus · Tholus · 794th largest named feature

Semele Tholi

Frygian (Phoenician) Earth goddess.

What Semele Tholi is

Semele Tholi is a tholus — a small domical mountain or hill — on Venus, 194 km across, centred at 64.3° N, 157.1° W in the Pandrosos Dorsa quadrangle. It is the 794th largest named feature on Venus and the 7th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Frygian (Phoenician) Earth goddess. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1985, under the theme it applies to every tholus on Venus. Of the 62 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Greek (5), Slavic (4), New Zealand (3), Japan (3).

Feature class
a small domical mountain or hill
Diameter
194 km
about 1.8 times shorter than the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
64.3° N, 157.1° W
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1985
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Pandrosos Dorsa
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
Phoenician
Asia

What it would take to settle Semele Tholi

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 64.3° N, 157.1° W.

Settlement difficulty here
45.8/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Venus overall
43
2.8 harder than the median site
Ranked
1770th
of 1,985 named places on Venus

What this spot has going for it is known ground 6,529 km from Venera 9 (1975). What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Semele Tholi'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 tholus features on Venus

All 62 tholi on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.