Correction of the VIR-visible data set from the Dawn mission at Vesta

TL;DR

This paper presents an empirical correction method for the VIR-visible dataset from the Dawn mission at Vesta, addressing detector temperature effects that distort spectral data and improve surface analysis accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel empirical correction technique tailored to the Vesta dataset to mitigate detector temperature-induced spectral slope distortions.

Findings

Effective correction of spectral slope increase due to detector temperature.

Enhanced accuracy in Vesta surface spectral analysis.

Method tailored specifically for the Dawn mission's Vesta data.

Abstract

This work describes the correction method applied to the dataset acquired at the asteroid (4) Vesta by the visible channel of the visible and infrared mapping spectrometer. The rising detector temperature during data acquisitions in the visible wavelengths leads to a spectral slope increase over the whole spectral range. This limits the accuracy of the studies of the Vesta surface in this wavelength range. Here, we detail an empirical method to correct for the visible detector temperature dependency while taking into account the specificity of the Vesta dataset.