Abstract | Mercury is notoriously difficult to observe with a telescope due to the planet’s small angular separation from the sun and the low elevation above the horizon. However, around twenty measurements in the last three decades have provided optical and infrared data of Mercury. Several studies (1,2,3,4) consistently report systematic variations of the normalized spectral slope of visible-to-near-infrared reflectance spectra correlated with the emission angle. This effect was previously assumed a photometric property of the regolith (2,3), but it is not yet fully understood. After the MESSENGER mission, global multispectral maps of Mercury are available that constrain Mercury’s photometry. So far, wavelength-dependent seeing has not been considered in the context of telescopic observations of Mercury. In our recent paper (5), we investigate the effect of wavelength-dependent seeing on systematic variations of Mercury’s normalized spectral reflectance slope. Therefore, we simulate the disk of Mercury for an idealized scenario, as seen by four different telescopic campaigns using the Hapke and the Kaasalainen–Shkuratov (KS) photometric model, the MDIS global mosaic, and a simple wavelength-dependent seeing model. The simulation results are compared with the observations of previous telescopic studies. We find that wavelength-dependent seeing affects the normalized spectral slope in several ways. The normalized slopes are enhanced near the limb, decrease toward the rim of the seeing disk, and even become negative. The decrease of the normalized spectral slope is consistent with previous observations. However, previous studies have associated the spectral slope variations with photometric effects that correlate with the emission angle. Our study suggests that wavelength-dependent seeing may cause these systematic variations. The combined reflectance and seeing model can also account for slope variations between different measurement campaigns. We report no qualitative differences between results based on the Hapke model or the KS model.
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(5) Wohlfarth, K.; Wöhler, C. Wavelength-Dependent Seeing Systematically Changes the Normalized Slope of Telescopic Reflectance Spectra of Mercury. Remote Sens. 2022, 14, 405.
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