Nyakaya Fluctus
What Nyakaya Fluctus is
Nyakaya Fluctus is a fluctus — a flow of erupted material — on Venus, 253 km across, centred at 41.4° S, 149.3° W in the Imdr Regio quadrangle. It is the 659th largest named feature on Venus and the 49th largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Shilluk (Sudan) crocodile goddess, wife of the high god Okwe. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2023, under the theme it applies to every fluctus on Venus. Of the 53 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Egypt (6), Siberia (4), Japan (3), Roman (3).
What it would take to settle Nyakaya Fluctus
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 41.4° S, 149.3° W.
What this spot has going for it is sunlight — 75% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Venus gets. What works against it is water — same as everywhere else on this world.
Computed from Nyakaya Fluctus'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 fluctus features on Venus
All 53 fluctus on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.