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Io · Patera · 231st largest named feature

Carancho Patera

Bolivian legendary hero who received fire from an owl.

What Carancho Patera is

Carancho Patera is a patera — an irregular or scalloped-edged crater, usually volcanic — on Io, 30.6 km across, centred at 1.5° N, 42.7° E. It is the 231st largest named feature on Io and the 147th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Bolivian legendary hero who received fire from an owl. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1985, under the theme it applies to every patera on Io. Of the 170 features of this class catalogued on Io, the naming categories run Japan (9), Celtic (8), India (6), China (6).

Feature class
an irregular or scalloped-edged crater, usually volcanic
Diameter
30.6 km
about a marathon
Coordinates
1.5° N, 42.7° E
Planetocentric, on Io
Name approved
1985
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Bolivia
South and Central America

What it would take to settle Carancho Patera

Io scores 76.7 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 1.5° N, 42.7° E.

Settlement difficulty here
75.8/ 100
Typical for this world
Io overall
76.7
0.9 easier than the median site
Ranked
20th
of 260 named places on Io

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 100% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Io gets. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Carancho Patera'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 Io (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Io 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 Io

All 170 paterae on Io — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.