What The (EP)F!?

While I wait for my paper on impact ejecta thermophysical properties to finally, finally be published,[1]It has a DOI now! (currently inactive, but when it’s up that link will take you to it) I thought I’d take a bit of a dive into a side project I’ve somehow been roped into[2]Read: intentionally volunteered for over the past few years. As a member of the Diviner science team, I’ve participated in many discussions and exchanges about how we can better understand and process our data, as well as improve our thermal models to more accurately fit the massive quantity of data Diviner has acquired over 15 years in service.

(left) An image of the lunar farside surface, taken by China's Yutu-2 rover. (right) An image of the mm-scale roughness of the lunar surface taken by the Apollo 11

Figure 11 from Bandfield et al. (2015), showing a simulation of the temperature on a simulated rough lunar surface. Note that differences of almost 100K can be maintained over a distance of just 1 mm!

Diagram showing the operation of Diviner when taking EPF observations.

Example of Diviner observations for one of the earliest EPF targets, a nondescript patch of the lunar highlands.

-xoxo gossip grad ☾⋆⁺₊⋆