No abstract

High-resolution images of Mercury's surface from orbit reveal that many bright deposits within impact craters exhibit fresh-appearing, irregular, shallow, rimless depressions. The depressions, or hollows, range from tens of meters to a few kilometers across, and many have high-reflectance interiors and halos. The host rocks, which are associated with crater central peaks, peak rings, floors, and walls, are interpreted to have been excavated from depth by the crater-forming process. The most likely formation mechanisms for the hollows involve recent loss of volatiles through some combination of sublimation, space weathering, outgassing, or pyroclastic volcanism. These features support the inference that Mercury's interior contains higher abundances of volatile materials than predicted by most scenarios for the formation of the solar system's innermost planet.

Ina is an enigmatic volcanic feature on the Moon known for its irregularly shaped mounds, the origin of which has been debated since the Apollo Missions. Three main units are observed on the floor of the depression (2.9 km across, ≤64 m deep) located at the summit of a low‐shield volcano: irregularly shaped mounds up to 20 m tall, a lower unit 1 to 5 m in relief that surrounds the mounds, and blocky material. Analyses of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera images and topography show that features in Ina are morphologically similar to terrestrial inflated lava flows. Comparison of these unusual lunar mounds and possible terrestrial analogs leads us to hypothesize that features in Ina were formed through lava flow inflation processes. While the source of the lava remains unclear, this new model suggests that as the mounds inflated, breakouts along their margins served as sources for surface flows that created the lower morphologic unit. Over time, mass wasting of both morphologic units has exposed fresh surfaces observed in the blocky unit. Ina is different than the terrestrial analogs presented in this study in that the lunar features formed within a depression, no vent sources are observed, and no cracks are observed on the mounds. However, lava flow inflation processes explain many of the morphologic relationships observed in Ina and are proposed to be analogous with inflated lava flows on Earth.

[1] The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter wide-angle camera measured the bidirectional reflectances of two areas on the Moon at seven wavelengths between 321 and 689 nm and at phase angles between 0°and 120°. It is not possible to account for the phase curves unless both coherent backscatter and shadow hiding contribute to the opposition effect. For the analyzed highlands area, coherent backscatter contributes nearly 40% in the UV, increasing to over 60% in the red. This conclusion is supported by laboratory measurements of the circular polarization ratios of Apollo regolith samples, which also indicate that the Moon's opposition effect contains a large component of coherent backscatter. The angular width of the lunar opposition effect is almost independent of wavelength, contrary to theories of the coherent backscatter which, for the Moon, predict that the width should be proportional to the square of the wavelength. When added to the large body of other experimental evidence, this lack of wavelength dependence reinforces the argument that our current understanding of the coherent backscatter opposition effect is incomplete or perhaps incorrect. It is shown that phase reddening is caused by the increased contribution of interparticle multiple scattering as the wavelength and albedo increase. Hence, multiple scattering cannot be neglected in lunar photometric analyses. A simplified semiempirical bidirectional reflectance function is proposed for the Moon that contains four free parameters and that is mathematically simple and straightforward to invert. This function should be valid everywhere on the Moon for phase angles less than about 120°, except at large viewing and incidence angles close to the limb, terminator, and poles.Citation: Hapke, B., B. Denevi, H. Sato, S. Braden, and M. Robinson (2012), The wavelength dependence of the lunar phase curve as seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter wide-angle camera,

[1] Quantifying relative differences in regolith optical maturation rates is critical to interpreting multispectral reflectance measurements of airless bodies. In this study, normalized reflectance measurements of crater ejecta blankets and rays are used as indicators of the relative state of regolith maturation on Mercury and the Moon, as well as for a comparison of surface reflectance. Characterization of craters with high-reflectance ejecta from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera and Mercury Dual Imaging System orbital mosaics indicates that the optical maturation rate is up to 4 times faster on Mercury than on the Moon. Observations also show that there are fewer immature craters (per unit area) on Mercury than on the Moon and suggest a younger average age for mercurian rayed craters than for lunar rayed craters. A comparison of crustal reflectance of immature material yields a ratio of 1.9 ± 0.4 for the average photometrically normalized reflectance of lunar material to that of mercurian material. The difference in reflectance is attributed primarily to differences in composition between the lunar highlands and average surface material on Mercury. The new observations of immature craters per unit area and surface reflectance of immature materials are consistent with previous proposals that regolith maturation rates are faster on Mercury than the Moon, and but here we quantify the relative rate from empirical observations for the first time.