A novel apparatus to measure reflected sunlight from the Moon

Published

September 19, 2013

Author(s)

Claire E. Cramer, Gerald T. Fraser, Keith R. Lykke, John T. Woodward IV, Alan W. Smith

Abstract

We describe a new apparatus for measuring the spectral irradiance of the Moon at visible wavelengths. Our effort builds upon the United States Geological Survey’s highly successful Robotic Lunar Observatory (ROLO), which determined a precise model for the time-dependent irradiance of the Moon from six years of observations obtained with an imaging telescope equipped with a set of narrow-band filters. The ROLO Irradiance Model allows the Moon to be used as a radiometric reference for tracking changes in the absolute responsivity of near-infrared to visible satellite sensors as a function of time to better than 1 %. The goal of the present effort is to improve the absolute radiometric accuracy of the ROLO model, presently estimated at 5 % - 10 %, to better than 1 %. Our approach, which uses an integrating sphere at the focal plane of a telescope to direct light from the integrated lunar disk into a stable spectrograph, also eliminates the need to interpolate between the 32 visible and near-infrared bands measured by ROLO. The new measurements will allow weather, climate, land-surface, and defense satellites to use the Moon as an absolute calibration reference, potentially reducing the impact of disruptions in continuous long-term climate data records caused by gaps in satellite-sensor coverage.

Citation

No Journal Selected

Volume

8867

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2027204

Keywords

lunar calibration, lunar radiation, lunar reflectance, Moon, Robotic Lunar Observatory, ROLO, satellite sensor calibration

Citation

Cramer, C. , Fraser, G. , Lykke, K. , Woodward, J. and Smith, A. (2013), A novel apparatus to measure reflected sunlight from the Moon, No Journal Selected, [online], https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2027204 (Accessed October 9, 2025)