Spectrophotometric correction of Vesta observations performed by the VIR Imaging spectrometer onboard Dawn mission

TL;DR

This paper presents a photometric correction method for VIR spectrometer data from the Dawn mission, enabling accurate surface albedo mapping of Vesta across a broad spectral range by removing observational geometry effects.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive photometric correction process for VIR data, improving the accuracy of Vesta's surface reflectance and albedo maps across multiple mission phases.

Findings

Generated surface albedo maps of Vesta.

Demonstrated the effectiveness of the correction in removing geometric dependencies.

Enhanced understanding of Vesta's surface composition and variability.

Abstract

The Visible InfraRed (VIR) mapping spectrometer onboard Dawn mission has obtained the spatial distribution of the spectral reflectance of Vesta in the wavelength ranges between 0.25-1.07 micrometers and 0.95-5.1 micrometers. A photometric correction allows to characterize the intrinsic variability of the surface albedo by removing the dependance of the reflectance from the observing geometry. In this work, we present the photometric correction obtained for observations from the Survey, HAMO and HAMO 2 mission phases at Vesta in the whole spectral range investigated by VIR, as well as the surface albedo maps.