| In order to quantify the spectral behavior of maturity variations in the mare, spectral trends of nearly 10,000 craters in six mare regions are examined. Radiative transfer theory is used to model these trends in order to better understand their causes. The maturity trends are confirmed to be more parallel than radial as previously suggested, and this fact is exploited to develop a new algorithm for determination of iron content in mare regions. This new mare iron algorithm better compensates for maturity than previous methods, and uncertainties due to maturity variations are less than 0.5 wt% FeO.; Measured optical constants of synthetic glasses of lunar-like compositions are used to predict the optical constants of any glass of an arbitrary combination of FeO and TiO2 content. These optical constants are employed along with radiative transfer theory to determine composition from telescopic spectra of three regional lunar pyroclastic deposits which are likely to contain large amounts of glass: the Aristarchus Plateau, Mare Humorum, and Sulpicius Gallus.; The imaginary coefficient of the complex index of refraction ( k) is derived from reflectance spectra of 30 pyroxenes. Modified Gaussian modeling is applied to these k spectra to obtain two continuum parameters and nine Gaussian parameters that describe the 1, 2, and 1.2 mum crystal field absorptions. Multiple regression results indicate that the continuum and Gaussian parameters are well predicted by pyroxene FeO and CaO contents; thus, a method to predict a complete pyroxene k spectrum from its FeO and CaO concentrations is developed.; The ability of radiative transfer modeling to reproduce reflectance spectra of known composition, and extract compositional information from reflectance spectra, is examined. This model is tested using spectra of mineral mixtures, nine lunar mare soil samples studied by the Lunar Soil Characterization Consortium, and the Apollo 11 landing site. The model is able to accurately reproduce reflectance spectra of mineral mixtures, and can accurately predict mineral abundances, mineral chemistry, and particle size. Modeling of lunar spectra suggests pyroxene chemistry can have as large an effect on spectral shape as mineral abundance, and improved methods for modeling agglutinates and some pyroxenes are necessary. |
