New Observations of the Marius Hills Complex from Moon Mineralogy

Introduction: The 35,000 km 2 Marius Hills (MH) complex located in Oceanus Procellarum is one of the highest concentrations of volcanic features (domes and cones) on the surface of the Moon [1]. Domes are 200-500m in height and have a different morphology from the surrounding mare units [2]. The domes are found within all the different lava flows as previously mapped from spectral [3,4] and/or brightness differences [5]. The wide variation in titanium content and strength of the 1 µm band argues for multiple source regions and eruption characteristics. Previous studies also suggest that the domes are spectrally (and thus compositionally) indistinguishable from the local mare [3,4]. In this study, we investigate the properties of the MH plateau over a more extended spectral range and at higher spectral resolution than previously available. Data: The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M 3), a guest instrument onboard India's Chandrayaan-1 mission to the Moon, is a 0.43 to 3.0 µm imaging spectrometer, which has mapped more than 95% of the Moon. The data over the MH complex presented here were obtained with a spatial resolution of 280 meter per pixel. At the time of acquisition , the detector was 6K above nominal temperature. This results in additional noise that leads to the vertical strips visible in Figures 1-3. All data have been processed through the M