Sopdet Tesserae
What Sopdet Tesserae is
Sopdet Tesserae is a tessera — terrain deformed into a tile-like pattern of ridges and grooves — on Venus, 500 km across, centred at 45.0° S, 117.0° W in the Helen Planitia quadrangle. It is the 386th largest named feature on Venus and the 47th largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Egyptian goddess of Sirius star and the forthcoming year. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1997, under the theme it applies to every tessera on Venus. Of the 65 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Greek (10), Slavic (5), Roman (4), Egypt (4).
What it would take to settle Sopdet Tesserae
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 45.0° S, 117.0° W.
What this spot has going for it is known ground — 6,726 km from Venera 13 (1982). What works against it is water — same as everywhere else on this world.
Computed from Sopdet Tesserae'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 tessera features on Venus
All 65 tesserae on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.