Lunar soil characterization consortium analyses: Pyroxene and maturity estimates derived from Clementine image data

The mineralogy of a planetary surface is a diagnostic product of its formation and geologic evolution. Global assessment of lunar mineralogy at high spatial resolution has been a long standing goal of lunar exploration. Currently, the only global data available for such study is multispectral imagery from the Clementine mission. We use the detailed compositional, petrographic, and spectroscopic data of lunar soils produced by the Lunar Soil Characterization Consortium to explore the use of multispectral imaging as a diagnostic tool. We compare several statistically optimized formulations of links between spectral and mineral parameters and apply them to Clementine UV-VIS data. The most reliable results are for estimations of pyroxene abundance and maturity parameters (agglutinate abundance, Is/FeO). Estimations of different pyroxene composition (low-Ca versus high-Ca) appear good in a relative sense, but absolute values are limited by residual wavelength dependent Clementine photometric calibrations. Since the signal-to-noise of Clementine multispectral data is good at the 1-km scale, almost any combination of parameters that capture inherent spectral variance can provide spatially coherent maps, although the parameters may not actually be directly related to composition. Clementine estimates are useful for identifying scientific or exploration targets for imaging spectrometer sensors of the next generation that are specifically designed to characterize mineralogy.     

Interpreting photometry of regolith-like surfaces with different topographies: shadowing and multiple scattering

The effects of various types of topography on the shadow-hiding effect and multiple scattering in particulate surfaces are studied. Two bounding cases were examined: (1) the characteristic scale of the topography is much larger than the surface particle size, and (2) the characteristic scale of the topography is comparable to the surface particle size. A Monte Carlo ray-tracing method (i.e., geometric optics approximation) was used to simulate light scattering. The computer modeling shows that rocky topographies generated by randomly distributed stones over a flat surface reveal much steeper phase curves than surface with random topography generated from Gaussian statistics of heights and slopes. This is because rocks may have surface slopes greater than 90°. Consideration of rocky topography is important for interpreting rover observations. We show the roughness parameter in the Hapke model to be slightly underestimated for bright planetary surfaces, as the model neglects multiple scattering on large-scale topographies. The multiple scattering effect also explains the weak spectral dependences of the roughness parameter in Hapke's model found by some authors. Multiple scattering between different parts of a rough surface suppresses the effect of shadowing, thus the effects produced by increases in albedo on the photometric behavior of a surface can be compensated for with the proper decreases in surface roughness. This defines an effective (photometric) roughness for a surface. The interchangeability of albedo and roughness is shown to be possible with fairly high accuracy for large-scale random topography. For planetary surfaces that have a hierarchically arranged large-scale random topography, predictions made with the Hapke model can significantly differ from real values of roughness. Particulate media with surface borders complicated by Gaussian or clumpy random topographies with characteristic scale comparable to the particle size reveal different photometric behaviors in comparison with particulate surfaces that are flat or the scale of their topographies is much larger than the particle size.     

Structure of the suprrnova remnant 3C 58 and its neighborhood

Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, Armenian Academy of Sciences; Scientific Research Institute of Radio Physics and Physics of the Ionosphere, Gor'kii. Translated from Astrofizika, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 470–475, May–June, 1989.     

The Area of Cold Traps on the Lunar Surface

We numerically calculate the probability and area of permanent shadowing as a function of the selenographic latitude as well as the total area of the permanently shadowed surface for various hierarchical models of the lunar surface. The permanently shadowed area is shown to rapidly increase with increasing number of hierarchical surface levels. For a two-level model of the lunar relief, where the surface of craters is complicated by a random small-scale relief with a Gaussian distribution of heights and slopes, the area of the doubly shadowed regions of the lunar surface is approximately an order of magnitude smaller than the area of the singly shadowed regions. A comparison of the permanently shadowed area calculated by using averaged statistical relations and data on the actual distribution of craters near the lunar poles shows almost complete agreement.     

Estimation of the Area of the Perpetually Shaded Lunar Surface

We present the results of computer simulation of the shadowing effect for three types of surface: (1) cratered, (2) formed by a random profile with Gaussian statistical height and slope distributions, and (3) a two-scale surface representing a cratered area that is complicated by small-scale random relief. The calculations are based on data on the distribution of lunar craters derived from the diameter/depth ratio and on the assumption of the equilibrium distribution of the crater population in the circumpolar areas of the lunar surface. We determined the characteristics of perpetually shaded areas of the lunar surface: the probability of the constant shadowing of an arbitrary surface point, the fraction of the perpetually shaded area as a function of selenographic latitude, the latitudinal dependence of the perpetually shaded area, and the total area of the perpetually shaded surface. The calculations showed that the presence of structural features of different scale on the lunar surface can considerably increase the estimate of the fraction of the perpetually shaded area compared to existing estimates.     

Spectral radiometric measurements of the temperature and radiation capacity of a rough sea surface

The results of radiometric remote simultaneous field measurements of the temperature and radiation capacity of the upper layer of the sea-surface temperature film 0.2 mm thick are presented. The measurements were conducted in the presence of wind waves and were characterized by an increased accuracy, which was achieved owing to the use of measurements of the intensity of radio radiation from the surface illuminated by radiation of a specified varying power. In our experiment, this illumination was provided by the radio radiation of the atmosphere, whose radiance temperature varies significantly, depending on the frequency at the slope of the absorption band of molecular oxygen (52.5–56 GHz). As a result, the radiation capacity and temperature of the skin layer were determined from the correlation dependence between the radiance temperatures of the surface and atmosphere measured by a radiometer-spectrometer in a number of channels separated in frequency. The radiance temperatures of the sea and atmosphere were measured at four frequencies of the 5-mm spectral range (53–55 GHz) on a vertical polarization. For absolute measurements, a calibration method was developed on the basis of a blackbody disk and two reflecting mirrors with the same solid angles. The measured values of the radiation capacity are variable and substantially smaller than the theoretical values determined by the models accepted for the permittivity of water and sea roughness. A possible cause of this can be the change of the permittivity of water in a thin surface layer of the temperature film (0.2 mm) due to the concentration of gases dissolved in water and surface-active substances within this layer.     

Statistical Analysis of the Links among Lunar Mare Soil Mineralogy, Chemistry, and Reflectance Spectra

A principal goal of the Lunar Soil Characterization Consortium (LSCC) is to evaluate tools that might be successfully used in remote compositional analysis of the lunar surface. Mathematical methods are extremely valuable to assess whether variations exist in a statistically significant manner, independent of their interpretation. The bounds of widely used correlation of visible to near-infrared spectral parameters with composition are first defined and evaluated. We then evaluate direct (or indirect) links between the combined spectral properties of lunar mare soils and their compositional properties (elemental abundance and mineralogy) through a statistical analysis of the variance across each measurement using principal component analysis (PCA). We first separately analyze LSCC elemental abundance, mineralogy, and spectroscopy data (0.35 to 2.5 μm) using PCA to capture the variance of each system with a relatively small number of independent variables. With this compact set of independent variables for each type of data, we derive functions to link composition and spectroscopy. For these mare soils, one of the best empirical predictive capability is that for FeO. This is not surprising since the effect of ferrous iron on optical properties is well documented. Although Al₂O₃ has no direct effect on optical properties, its strong anticorrelation with FeO also produces a relatively high predictive capability from spectra. Similarly, a high accuracy in predicting the abundance of pyroxene is observed and should be expected since iron-bearing pyroxene is one of the most optically active components of lunar soil. The accuracy for predicting either TiO₂ or ilmenite, on the other hand, is disappointing. High- and low-Ti soils are readily distinguished, but these statistics suggest that making subclass distinctions based on spectral predictions of TiO₂ would be risky.     

Cosmic-ray energetics in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A

Based on the observed radio spectrum for the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, we have established that it represents synchrotron radiation of relativistic electrons with a nonpower-law energy spectrum in the form of Kaplan-Tsytovich’s standard distribution. The total density of relativistic electrons is 10^?3 cm^?3, only 20% of which form the radio spectrum. The particle number ratio of the proton-nuclear and electron cosmicray components inside the shell differs significantly from the mean Galactic ratio (100) and probably does not exceed unity.