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A large plain in the region of Mercury designated the Northwestern Quadrant (north of the equator and between 100° and 190° west). Sobkou takes its name from the ancient Egyptian crocodile god (whose name is more usually transliterated Sobek); among a diverse range of godly duties, he was associated by the Egyptians with the planet known today as Mercury.
The plain covers an area of some 250,000 square kilometres (approximately comparable with the area of New Zealand on Earth). For the most part this is a flat and featureless region of Mercury, though its southwestern edge is marked by the steep escarpment Heemskerck Rupes.
The most prominent features within the plain itself are a pair of craters, similar in size to one another, known as Brontë and Degas. Brontë is the older of the two craters, and the impact the formed Degas has overlapped the edges of that older crater and spread a spray of rays across the southern regions of Sobkou Planitia and beyond.
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