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Published in

Earth and Space 2012

DOI: 10.1061/9780784412190.025

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Photometric Analysis of the Apollo Landing Sites

Proceedings article published in 2012 by Ryan N. Clegg ORCID, Bradley L. Jolliff, Philip T. Metzger
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Disturbed lunar regolith has distinctly different photometric properties than undisturbed regolith. Properties such as composition, grain size and size distribution, grain shapes, glass and Fe 0 contents, and structure (fine-scale layering or "fairy-castle" forms) determine how light is reflected from the surface. Photometry can be used to extract this information from regions with different photometric behavior or to compare disturbed and undisturbed areas. Of interest here are regions around the Apollo landers that were disturbed during descent, which we refer to as blast zones. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) images show that the blast zones are brighter and have distinctly different photometric properties than surrounding regolith, presumably owing to smoothing of the surface and/or removal/redistribution of fine particles. We use phase-ratio images for each landing site to determine the size of the blast zone around each lander and to quantify the differences in reflectance within the blast zones in comparison to nearby undisturbed regolith. Most of the blast zones are elliptical in shape, but some are irregular. The average area of regolith brightening from preliminary measurements for the blast zones is ~115,000 m 2