Comparative Analysis of Diurnal Thermal Radiation Variation among Lunar Craters of Different Ages Using CE-2 MRM Data

Abstract

Microwave radiometer (MRM) is one of the important payloads on the Chang’e-2 (CE-2) Lunar satellite. In the Chang’e satellite’s observation of the microwave radiation brightness temperature (TB) on the lunar surface, there are some “cold spots” of microwave thermal radiation at night containing the Jackson crater. In order to compare the diurnal radiation TB differences of “cold spots” on the lunar surface, two typical craters at similar latitudes on the northern hemisphere on the lunar farside were selected: Jackson, which represents the new craters with a large number of discrete rocks on their surfaces; and Morse, which no longer has a large number of rocks after long-term meteorite impact and lunar evolution. In this paper, the diurnal variation of CE-2 MRM data in the two craters is presented, and a comparative analysis is made with the (FeO + TiO2) abundance (FTA) obtained by Clementine UV-VIS data and the rock abundance (RA) data of LRO Diviner. We find that the variation of the "cold spots" of lunar surface thermal radiation is closely related to the RA distribution in the newly formed craters on the lunar surface, and also has a certain correlation with the FTA.

Keywords

• MRM
• lunar crater
• microwave thermal radiation
• cold spots