Preliminary Infrared Radiometry of the Night Side of Mercury from Mariner 10
Abstract
The infrared radiometer on Mariner 10 measured the thermal emission from the planet with a spatial resolution element as small as 40 kilometers in a broad wavelength band centered at 45 micrometers. The minimum brightness temperature (near local midnight) in these near-equatorial scans was 100°K. Along the track observed, the temperature declined steadily from local sunset to near midnight, behaving as would be expected for a homogeneous, porous material with a thermal inertia of 0.0017 cal cm^(-2) sec^(-½) °K^(-1), a value only slightly larger than that of the moon. From near midnight to dawn, however, the temperature fluctuated over a range of about 10°K, implying the presence of regions having thermal inertia as high as 0.003 cal cm^(-2) sec^(-½) °K^(-1).
Additional Information
© 1974 American Association for the Advancement of Science. 31 May 1974. We thank the entire Mariner team, both at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at Santa Barbara Research Center, for making the mission successful. We thank J. Bennett for help with the data analysis, J. Engel for his work as leader of the radiometry group at SBRC, and T. Clarke for his work as instrument engineer.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 62069
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- CaltechAUTHORS:20151112-113949944
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2015-11-12Created from EPrint's datestamp field
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field