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S. Pinori, G. Bellucci (CNR - IFSI)
We present the study of three lunar regions in the 0.4-1.0 micron spectral domain. These areas have been identified as dark mantle deposits and include Taurus Littrow, Sulpicius Gallus and Rima Bode deposits. The data acquired by an imaging spectrometer have been processed using two independent statistical methods: the Principal Component Analysis and an unsupervising clustering technique. By means of these methods it has been possible to identify the areas covered by dark mantle material and comparing the different spectral properties of the three deposits. The dark mantle deposits have been divided in two different spectral class. Taurus Littrow and Rima Bode belong to the first class, whose spectra display a broad absorption band centered roughly on 0.7 micron. Sulpicius Gallus deposit belong to the second class and its spectrum shows a steep positive slope in the near-infrared wavelength range. The spectral analysis highlights the dark mantle deposits borders and the presence of spectrally distinct areas near the Rima Bode deposit having intermediate spectral behaviour between mare soil and the dark mantling material, probably due to a mixing of the terrains. A model of the deposits emplacement is also presented, using the results obtained by the statistical approach.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: Sabrina.Pinori@ifsi.rm.cnr.it