Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society (천문학회지)

The Korean Astronomical Society (한국천문학회)
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REFLECTANCE-COLOR TRENDS ON THE LUNAR MARE SURFACE

  • Kim, Sungsoo S. (Humanitas College, Kyung Hee University) ;
  • Sim, Chae Kyung (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute)
  • Received : 2021.08.20
  • Accepted : 2022.04.22
  • Published : 2022.06.30
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Abstract

The lunar surface progressively darkens and reddens as a result of sputtering from solar wind particles and bombardment of micrometeoroids. The extent of exposure to these space weathering agents is frequently calculated as the location in a diagram of reflectance at 750 nm vs. 950 nm/750 nm color (R-C). Sim & Kim (2018) examined the R-C trends of pixels within ~3,500 craters, and revealed that the length (L) and skewness (s) of R-C trends can be employed as a secondary age or maturity indicator. We broaden this research to general lunar surface areas (3,400 tiles of 0.25° × 0.25° size) in 218 mare basalt units, whose ages have been derived from the size-frequency distribution analysis by Hiesinger et al. (2011). We discover that L and s rise with age until ~3.2 Gyr and reduce rather rapidly afterward, while the optical maturity, OMAT, reduces monotonically with time. We show that in some situations, when not only OMAT but also L and s are incorporated in the estimation utilizing 750 & 950 nm photometry, the age estimation becomes considerably more reliable. We also observed that OMAT and the lunar cratering chronology function (cumulative number of craters larger than a certain diameter as a function of time) have a relatively linear relationship.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The work by SSK was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (2019R1A2C1009004).

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