Abstract Yutu is the first lunar rover after the Apollo program and Luna missions. One of the payloads on the Yutu rover, the Visible and Near-infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS), has acquired four VIS/NIR images and SWIR spectra near its landing site in Mare Imbrium. The radiance images were reduced through repairing bad lines and bad points, and applying flat field correction, and then were converted into reflectance values based on the solar irradiance and angles of incidence. A significant shadow effect was observed in the VIS/NIR image. The shadowed regions show lower reflectance with a darkening trend compared with illuminated regions. The reflectance increased by up to 24% for entire images and 17% for the VIS/NIR-SWIR overlapping regions after shadow correction. The correction for the shadow effect will remarkably decrease the estimate of FeO content, by up to 4.9 wt.% in this study. The derived FeO contents of CD-005∼008 after shadow correction are around 18.0 wt.%.
Keywords Moon — Chang’e-3 — Yutu — VNIS — shadow — reflectance
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