Abstract
Global distribution of lunar composition: New results from Lunar Prospector
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse, France
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Lunar Research Institute, Tucson, Arizona, USA
Maps of thorium [Th], [FeO], the ratio of epithermal to thermal neutrons (E/T), and fast neutrons (FN) from Lunar Prospector
were studied to determine their global distribution on the Moon. These distributions are compared to that of the 750 nm lunar
albedo from Clementine to aid in their interpretation. All distributions were parameterized using a spherical harmonic expansion
out to order l = 30. Resultant harmonic coefficients generally decrease with increasing l value as a power law in l for all five variables. The axes of all dipole components (l = 1) cluster closely about a centroid given by +14.1° latitude and 16.4° west longitude. This location is very close to the
symmetry axes of their quadrupole components (l = 2), which cluster about a centroid given by +24.6° latitude and 25.1° west longitude. Both centroids are near the center
of a suggested Procellarum basin, given by
Published 28 March 2002.
Citation: (2002), Global distribution of lunar composition: New results from Lunar Prospector, J. Geophys. Res., 107(E3), 5016, doi:10.1029/2001JE001506.
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