Derivation of elemental abundance maps at intermediate resolution from optical interpolation of lunar prospector gamma-ray spectrometer data

We propose a technique that interpolates available lunar prospector gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) data using Clementine UVVIS spectral reflectance images. The main idea is to use low resolution GRS data as a “ground truth” to establish relationships linking optical data and geochemical information maximizing the respective correlation coefficients. Then the relationships and Clementine UVVIS data are used to derive elemental abundance maps with significantly improved spatial resolution. The main limitation of the technique is its dependence on how well the abundance of the elements correlates with the Clementine UVVIS data. The technique can also be applied to analysis of coming D-CIXS/Smart-1 and AMIE/Smart-1 data to increase resolution of lunar compositional maps. As an illustration of the suggested technique, maps for the elements Fe, Ti, O, Al, Ca, and Mg with pixel size 15 km×15 km are presented. The Fe and Ti distributions resemble qualitatively to the maps obtained with the well-known technique by lucey et al. (2000a. Lunar iron and titanium abundance algorithms based on final processing of Clementine ultraviolet-visible images. J. Geophys. Res. 105, 20,297-20,306), though in our case the ranges of Fe and Ti variations are, respectively, wider and narrower than for lucey's maps. New maps for the elements Fe, Ti, O, Al, Ca, and Mg appear to be informative. For instance, the map of oxygen abundance demonstrates an anomaly in the crater Tycho. The maps of Fe and Al contents show for highland regions slight variations related to maturity degree. Reliability of this relation is confirmed with lunar sample data. The reason of the correlation between chemical composition and exposition age of the lunar surface can be the global transport of the lunar surface material due to meteorite impacts.     

Calibration against the Moon I: A disk-resolved lunar model for absolute reflectance calibration

We present a model of the absolute radiance of the disk-resolved Moon at visible to near infrared wavelengths. It has been developed in order to use the Moon as a calibration reference, particularly by space-based sensors observing the Earth. We begin with the development of Hillier et al. (Hillier, J., Buratti, B., Hill, K. [1999]. Icarus 141, 205-225) for the reflectance as a function of phase angle and base the lunar reflectance on the Clementine 0.750 μm basemap. We adopt Hapke’s (Hapke, B. [2002]. Icarus 157, 523-534) expression for the multiple scattering term, including the more accurate approximation to the Chandrasekhar H function. The geometry is based on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Lunar Ephemeris DE 421, and the topographic slope is from the Kaguya-LALT laser altimetry (Araki, H., and 10 colleagues [2009]. Science 323, 897-900). We define three types of terrain by combining the reflectance from the Clementine basemap and the topographic model to specify maria, highlands, and crater regions, and allow mixed types between each class. Parameters of the model are solved for as a function of surface type and wavelength by comparison against data “chips” from the Robotic Lunar Observatory (ROLO; Kieffer, H.H., Stone, T.C. [2005]. Astron. J. 129, 2887-2901). The reflectance in any waveband may be computed by spectral interpolation of the model predictions relative to the scaled Apollo 16 soil spectrum. The accuracy of the model, evaluated against ROLO imagery, was found to be 2-4%.     

Minerals mapping of the lunar surface with Clementine UVVIS/NIR data based on spectra unmixing method and Hapke model

The distribution of minerals on the lunar surface is information which could contribute to studying lunar origin and evolution. In this paper, the distribution of clinopyroxene, orthopyroxene, olivine, ilmenite, and plagioclase on the lunar surface has been mapped based on Hapke radiative transfer model and linear unmixing of spectra with Clementine UVVIS/NIR data. The results have been validated on the basis of minerals modal abundance data of the Apollo samples, and problems in the minerals abundance mapping have been analyzed. The validation based on analysis data of Apollo samples indicates that plagioclase mapped in this paper represents the total abundance of plagioclase and agglutinitic glass. The minerals mapping results show that the lunar surface is mainly composed of pyroxene, plagioclase, agglutinitic glass, and ilmenite. Basalt in the lunar mare is mainly composed of clinopyroxene and ilmenite, and lunar highland is mainly composed of plagioclase and agglutinitic glass. Orthopyroxene is mainly distributed on the north of Mare Imbrium, on the south of Maria and Aitken Basin. According to our results, there is probably no large area of olivine distribution on the lunar surface which is different from earlier published results. Therefore, emphasis should be put on the olivine distribution in the minerals mapping using hyperspectral data such as M³ of Chandrayaan-1 and IIM of ChangE-1.     

Retrieving volume FeO and TiO_2 abundances of lunar regolith with CE-2 CELMS data using BPNN method

The volume FeO and TiO_2 abundances(FTAs) of lunar regolith can be more important for understanding the geological evolution of the Moon compared to the optical and gamma-ray results. In this paper, the volume FTAs are retrieved with microwave sounder(CELMS) data from the Chang'E-2 satellite using the back propagation neural network(BPNN) method. Firstly, a three-layered BPNN network with five-dimensional input is constructed by taking nonlinearity into account. Then, the brightness temperature(TB) and surface slope are set as the inputs and the volume FTAs are set as the outputs of the BPNN network.Thereafter, the BPNN network is trained with the corresponding parameters collected from Apollo, Luna,and Surveyor missions. Finally, the volume FTAs are retrieved with the trained BPNN network using the four-channel TBderived from the CELMS data and the surface slope estimated from Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter(LOLA) data. The rationality of the retrieved FTAs is verified by comparing with the Clementine UV-VIS results and Lunar Prospector(LP) GRS results. The retrieved volume FTAs enable us to re-evaluate the geological features of the lunar surface. Several important results are as follows. Firstly, very-low-Ti(<1.5 wt.%) basalts are the most spatially abundant, and the surfaces with TiO_2> 5 wt.% constitute less than 10% of the maria. Also, two linear relationships occur between the FeO abundance(FA) and the TiO_2 abundance before and after the threshold, 16 wt.% for FA. Secondly, a new perspective on mare volcanism is derived with the volume FTAs in several important mare basins, although this conclusion should be verified with more sources of data. Thirdly, FTAs in the lunar regolith change with depth to the uppermost surface,and the change is complex over the lunar surface. Finally, the distribution of volume FTAs hints that the highlands crust is probably homogeneous, at least in terms of the microwave thermophysical parameters.     

A reanalysis of the Apollo light scattering observations, and implications for lunar exospheric dust

Conspicuous excess brightness, exceeding that expected from coronal and zodiacal light (CZL), was observed above the lunar horizon in the Apollo 15 coronal photographic sequence acquired immediately after orbital sunset (surface sunrise). This excess brightness systematically faded as the Command Module moved farther into shadow, eventually becoming indistinguishable from the CZL background. These observations have previously been attributed to scattering by ultrafine dust grains (radius ∼0.1 microns) in the lunar exosphere, and used to obtain coarse estimates of dust concentration at several altitudes and an order-of-magnitude estimate of ∼10⁻⁹ g cm⁻² for the column mass of dust near the terminator, collectively referred to as model “0”.We have reanalyzed the Apollo 15 orbital sunset sequence by incorporating the known sightline geometries in a Mie-scattering simulation code, and then inverting the measured intensities to retrieve exospheric dust concentration as a function of altitude and distance from the terminator. Results are presented in terms of monodisperse (single grain size) dust distributions. For a grain radius of 0.10 microns, our retrieved dust concentration near the terminator (∼0.010 cm⁻³) is in agreement with model “0” at z=10 km, as is the dust column mass (∼3–6×10⁻¹⁰ g cm⁻²), but the present results indicate generally larger dust scale heights, and much lower concentrations near 1 km (<0.08 cm⁻³ vs. a few times 0.1 cm⁻³ for model “0"). The concentration of dust at high altitudes (z>50 km) is virtually unconstrained by the measurements. The dust exosphere extends into shadow a distance somewhere between 100 and 200 km from the terminator, depending on the uncertain contribution of CZL to the total brightness. These refined estimates of the distribution and concentration of exospheric dust above the lunar sunrise terminator should place new and more rigorous constraints on exospheric dust transport models, as well as provide valuable support for upcoming missions such as the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE).     

A statistical analysis of gamma-ray bursts based on the beaming model

We assume that gamma-ray bursts come from relativistic beaming in random directions, with the bursts being standard candles in their own rest frames and following a power-law distribution, and that the rate of occurrence is a constant in the comoving frame of the Ω = 1, Λ = 0 Friedmann universe. This model is very sensitive to the beaming velocity. For a Lorentz factor Γ < 10 and a power-law index n < 1.0 our calculated statistics agree with the BATSE data of weak bursts and the PVO data of strong bursts.     

A mini-supernova model for optical afterglows of gamma-ray bursts

An energy deposition of ∼10⁵⁰ erg into the exterior 10⁻³ M⊙ layers of a red giant is calculated to produce an optical phenomenon similar to afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRB) recently observed. This mechanism can be realized if a GRB is generated by some mechanism in a close binary system. In contrast to a 'hypernova' scenario for GRB recently proposed by Paczyński, this model does not require huge kinetic energy in the expanding shell to explain optical afterglows of GRB.     

Impact of aerosols and adverse atmospheric conditions on the data quality for spectral analysis of the H.E.S.S. telescopes

The Earth’s atmosphere is an integral part of the detector in ground-based imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope (IACT) experiments and has to be taken into account in the calibration. Atmospheric and hardware-related deviations from simulated conditions can result in the mis-reconstruction of primary particle energies and therefore of source spectra. During the eight years of observations with the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) in Namibia, the overall yield in Cherenkov photons has varied strongly with time due to gradual hardware aging, together with adjustments of the hardware components, and natural, as well as anthropogenic, variations of the atmospheric transparency. Here we present robust data selection criteria that minimize these effects over the full data set of the H.E.S.S. experiment and introduce the Cherenkov transparency coefficient as a new atmospheric monitoring quantity. The influence of atmospheric transparency, as quantified by this coefficient, on energy reconstruction and spectral parameters is examined and its correlation with the aerosol optical depth (AOD) of independent MISR satellite measurements and local measurements of atmospheric clarity is investigated.     

A simple test of the external shock model for the prompt emission in gamma-ray bursts

It is demonstrated here that if the prompt GRB emission is produced by the simplest version of the external shock model, a specific relation should prevail between the observed duration, isotropic equivalent energy, and photon peak energy. In essence, this relation arises because both the burst duration and the typical energy of the emitted synchrotron photons depend on the same combination of the, usually poorly constrained, external density at the deceleration radius, n_dec, and initial bulk Lorentz factor, Γ₀. This has the fortunate consequence of making the relation independent of both Γ₀ and n_dec. Unless the efficiency of electron acceleration is very low, synchrotron gamma-rays from the external shock would fail to meet the current observational constraints for the vast majority of GRBs, including those with a smooth, single peak temporal profile. This argues either against an external shock origin for the prompt emission in GRBs or for changes in our understanding of the microphysical and radiation processes occurring within the shocked region.     

A Hapke model implementation for compositional analysis of VNIR spectra of Mercury

An implementation of Hapke’s radiative transfer-based photometric model for light scattering in semi-transparent porous media is presented with special emphasis on the analysis of reflectance spectra of Mercury. The model allows intimate mixing of an arbitrary number of regolith components with varying modal abundances, modal chemistries and grain sizes, matured by microphase iron. Reflectance spectra of suites of silicates of varying grain sizes and chemistries are used to calculate the imaginary coefficient of the complex index of refraction as a function of chemistry, thus limiting the modeling effects of chemically atypical laboratory samples, and allowing controlled modeling of minerals with varying chemical compositions. The performance of the model in the visual to near-infrared wavelength range is evaluated for a range of chemically characterized silicate mixtures of terrestrial powders, meteorite powders, matured lunar return samples, and remotely sensed lunar spectra.