LROC WAC 100 Meter Scale Photometrically Normalized Map of the Moon

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Wide Angle Camera (WAC) monthly global observations allowed derivation of a robust empirical photometric solution over a broad range of incidence, emission and phase (i, e, g) angles. Combining the WAC stereo-based GLD100 [1] digital terrain model (DTM) and LOLA polar DTMs [2] enabled precise topographic corrections to photometric angles. Over 100,000 WAC observations at 643 nm were calibrated to reflectance (I/F). Photometric angles (i, e, g), latitude, and longitude were calculated and stored for each WAC pixel. The 6-dimensional data set was then reduced to 3 dimensions by photometrically normalizing I/F with a global solution similar to [3]. The global solution was calculated from three 2°x2° tiles centered on (1°N, 147°E), (45°N, 147°E), and (89°N, 147°E), and included over 40 million WAC pixels. A least squares fit to a multivariate polynomial of degree 4 (f(i,e,g)) was performed, and the result was the starting point for a minimum search solving the non-linear function min[{1-[ I/F / f(i,e,g)] }²]. The input pixels were filtered to incidence angles (calculated from topography) < 89° and I/F greater than a minimum threshold to avoid shadowed pixels, and the output normalized I/F values were gridded into an equal-area map projection at 100 meters/pixel. At each grid location the median, standard deviation, and count of valid pixels were recorded. The normalized reflectance map is the result of the median of all normalized WAC pixels overlapping that specific 100-m grid cell. There are an average of 86 WAC normalized I/F estimates at each cell [3]. The resulting photometrically normalized mosaic provides the means to accurately compare I/F values for different regions on the Moon (see Nuno et al. [4]). The subtle differences in normalized I/F can now be traced across the local topography at regions that are illuminated at any point during the LRO mission (while the WAC was imaging), including at polar latitudes. This continuous map of reflectance at 643 nm, normalized to a standard geometry of i=30, e=0, g=30, ranges from 0.036 to 0.36 (0.01%-99.99% of the histogram) with a global mean reflectance of 0.115. Immature rays of Copernican craters are typically >0.14 and maria are typically <0.07 with averages for individual maria ranging from 0.046 to 0.060. The materials with the lowest normalized reflectance on the Moon are pyroclastic deposits at Sinus Aestuum (<0.036) and those with the highest normalized reflectance are found on steep crater walls (>0.36)[4]. 1. Scholten et al. (2012) J. Geophys. Res., 117, doi: 10.1029/2011JE003926. 2. Smith et al. (2010), Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L18204, doi:10.1029/2010GL043751. 3. Boyd et al. (2012) LPSC XLIII, #2795 4. Nuno et al. AGU, (this conference)