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Absorption Spectra of Martian Dust Simulants

Published

Author(s)

James Radney, Christopher D. Zangmeister

Abstract

Understanding the climate of Mars requires a detailed understanding of the optical properties of Martian dust as it is a ubiquitous component of the atmosphere. The need for a consensus motivates measurements of terrestrial simulants under controlled conditions. We demonstrate an in-situ method to entrain and directly measure the absorption spectrum of six Martian dust simulants using photoacoustic spectroscopy. Measured absorption cross-sections (Cabs) were used in Mie theory calculations to retrieve the imaginary component of the refractive index (k) of each sample while constraining the real component to n = 1.5; the refractive index of silica. The weakly absorbing simulants have k values ranging between 0.002 and 0.03 at λ = 500 nm.
Citation
ACS Earth and Space Chemistry

Keywords

Mars, dust, absorption, absorption

Citation

Radney, J. and Zangmeister, C. (2022), Absorption Spectra of Martian Dust Simulants, ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.1c00335, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=932686 (Accessed March 29, 2024)
Created February 18, 2022, Updated February 21, 2023