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Io · Eruptive center · 30th largest named feature

Marduk

Sumero-Akkadian fire god.

What Marduk is

Marduk is an eruptive center — the active source of an eruption — on Io, 370 km across, centred at 29.6° S, 150.1° E. It is the 30th largest named feature on Io and the 5th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Sumero-Akkadian fire god. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1979, under the theme it applies to every eruptive center on Io. Of the 8 features of this class catalogued on Io, the naming categories run Japan (1), Greek (1), Germany (1), Georgia (1).

Feature class
the active source of an eruption
Diameter
370 km
about the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
29.6° S, 150.1° E
Planetocentric, on Io
Name approved
1979
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Akkadian (Accadian)
Asia

What it would take to settle Marduk

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 29.6° S, 150.1° E.

Settlement difficulty here
78.2/ 100
Typical for this world
Io overall
76.7
1.5 harder than the median site
Ranked
210th
of 260 named places on Io

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 87% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Io gets. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Marduk'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 eruptive center features on Io