Stopes Patera
What Stopes Patera is
Stopes Patera is a patera — an irregular or scalloped-edged crater, usually volcanic — on Venus, 169 km across, centred at 42.6° N, 46.5° E in the Bell Regio quadrangle. It is the 838th largest named feature on Venus and the 4th largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Marie; English paleontologist (1880-1959). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1991, under the theme it applies to every patera on Venus. Of the 72 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run American (13), Russia (11), Great Britain (5), France (4).
What it would take to settle Stopes Patera
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 42.6° N, 46.5° E.
What this spot has going for it is sunlight — 74% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Venus gets. What works against it is water — same as everywhere else on this world.
Computed from Stopes Patera'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 patera features on Venus
All 72 paterae on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.