Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufm.p13d1694g&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #P13D-1694
Other
[5464] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Remote Sensing, [5470] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Surface Materials And Properties, [5494] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Instruments And Techniques, [6250] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Moon
Scientific paper
Recent observations using near-infrared (NIR) data from the Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), Kaguya Spectral Profiler (SP) and Multiband Imager (MI) have shown the Moscoviense Basin on the lunar farside has a range of compositional anomalies including exposures rich in the oxide Mg-spinel and the mafic minerals olivine and pyroxene, [Yamamoto et al., 2010; Pieters et al., 2011] and have posed a range of possibilities for their origin, including possible exposures of lunar mantle material. A mantle origin would require some or all of these anomalies to contain little feldspar. However, in the presence of substantial quantities of mafic minerals the abundance of feldspar is highly uncertain in near-infrared data, particularly if the feldspar is shocked and does not feature a diagnostic absorption. In contrast, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Diviner Lunar Radiometer thermal-infrared (TIR) data are more linearly sensitive to feldspar in the presence of mafic minerals and these data are used to make more accurate estimates of mafic to feldspar ratio. Diviner has three channels near 8 microns (7.81, 8.28, and 8.55) designed to characterize the Christiansen feature (CF) of lunar soils, a well studied indicator of silicate mineralogy (Greenhagen et al., 2010; Paige et al., 2010). However, in Diviner data the class of the mafic (i.e. pyroxene v. olivine) strongly influences the spectral interpretation because CF is affected by the three major minerals classes, leading to a range of possible compositions. Specifically, feldspar and olivine show CF values at the extremes of the range of CF values, while pyroxene has an intermediate CF value. It is the combination of NIR data and TIR CF data that provides an unambiguous solution. NIR data is very sensitive to the olivine-pyroxene ratio as demonstrated by many studies (e.g. Cloutis & Gaffey, 1990; Sunshine et al., 1990). In turn, given the ratio of pyroxene to olivine, the CF parameter provides a unique solution with respect to feldspar abundance. Preliminary analysis of six mafic exposures in Moscoviense, including both previously reported exposures [Yamamoto et al., 2010; Pieters et al., 2011] and new exposures discovered using Diviner data show a range of feldspar contents, ranging from very small abundances of feldspar to approximately equal abundances of mafics and feldspar. Additionally, the spectral properties of Mg-spinels of the compositions inferred from NIR data are poorly known at TIR wavelengths. The peculiar NIR properties of Mg-spinel strongly suggest that few other mafic minerals can be present, so these exposures enable us to characterize the CF properties of Mg-spinel to aid interpretation of other unique locations.
Donaldson Hanna Kerri L.
Greenhagen Benjamin T.
Lucey Paul G.
Paige David A.
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