Optical Photometry of the Martian Surface at Microscopic Scales

Details Optical Photometry of the Martian Surface at Microscopic Scales Optical Photometry of the Martian Surface at Microscopic Scales

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufm.p41b1269g&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #P41B-1269

Physics

5400 Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets, 5464 Remote Sensing, 5470 Surface Materials And Properties

Scientific paper

The Microscopic Imagers on the Mars Exploration Rovers allow us to acquire unique measurements of the small scale reflectance of Martian soils and rocks at various times of day. These close-up images can be used to determine the light scattering phase function of individual surface components and compare them to the scene average and remote observations. So far, we have performed the experiment only once with Opportunity, on a soil surface in Meridiani Planum made up of mm-sized hematite-rich spherules mixed with fine grained sand and dust. We have plans to image the soils of Gusev Crater as soon as it is safe to rotate Spirit towards the afternoon sun. The Meridiani images with their 30-μm per pixel resolution show the microscopic shadows cast by the tiny spherules and allow us to separately analyze the reflectance of the spherules and the fines. Over a limited range of phase angles from 27 to 46 degrees, the scene average appears to darken more rapidly with increasing phase angle than a Lambertian surface, because of these microscopic shadows that are unresolved in remote observations. In contrast, the sunlit dust/sand mixture appears quasi-lambertian, whereas the sunlit spherules are slightly forward-scattering. The spherules display prominent specular reflections that contribute to their nonlinear scattering behavior. Changes in the fines from one sol to the next provide evidence of present day aeolian sediment transport, possibly influenced by the proximity of the IDD.

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