The Moon at thermal infrared wavelengths: A benchmark for asteroid thermal models

TL;DR

This study uses thermal infrared measurements of the Moon to benchmark and validate a thermophysical model (TPM), improving asteroid surface property estimations and calibration of IR instruments for space missions.

Contribution

It introduces a lunar-based benchmark for TPM validation, enhancing the accuracy of asteroid thermal modeling and calibration of IR sensors in space missions.

Findings

TPM predictions match lunar IR data within 5%

Global emissivity model deviations at certain wavelengths

Benchmarking improves asteroid thermal property estimates

Abstract

Thermal-infrared measurements of asteroids are crucial for deriving the objects' sizes, albedos, and also the thermophysical properties of the surface material. Depending on the available data, a range of simple to complex thermal models are applied to achieve specific science goals. However, testing these models is often a difficult process and the uncertainties of the derived parameters are not easy to estimate. Here, we make an attempt to verify a widely accepted thermophysical model (TPM) against unique thermal infrared (IR), full-disk, and well-calibrated measurements of the Moon. The data were obtained by the High-resolution InfraRed Sounder (HIRS) instruments on board a fleet of Earth weather satellites that serendipitously scan over the Moon. We found 22 Moon intrusions, taken in 19 channels between 3.75 micron and 15.0 micron, and over a wide phase angle range from -73.1 deg to +73.8 deg. The similarity between these Moon data and typical asteroid spectral-IR energy distributions allows us to benchmark the TPM concepts and to point out problematic aspects. The TPM predictions match the HIRS measurements within 5% (10% at the shortest wavelengths below 5 micron when using the Moon's known properties (size, shape, spin, albedo, thermal inertia, roughness) in combination with a newly established wavelength-dependent hemispherical emissivity. In the 5-7.5 micron and in the 9.5 to 11 micron ranges, the global emissivity model deviates considerably from the known lunar sample spectra. Our findings will influence radiometric studies of near-Earth and main-belt asteroids in cases where only short-wavelength data (from e.g., NEOWISE, the warm Spitzer mission, or ground-based M-band measurements) are available. The new, full-disk IR Moon model will also be used for the calibration of IR instrumentation on interplanetary missions (e.g., for Hayabusa-2) and weather satellites.