[M-IS16] Planetary Volcanology

[MIS16-02] Lunar surface age on Marius Hills

*Ken Ishiyama¹ (1.International Professional University of Technology in Tokyo)

Keywords:Marius Hills, Crater Counting, LRO, Kaguya

The volcanic activity on the Moon was notably occurring on the nearside between approximately 3.5 and 1.5 billion years ago [e.g., Morota et al., 2011]. The vast area of the nearside of the Moon, Oceanus Procellarum, particularly features young lava flows that erupted during this period and the volcanic landscape known as Marius Hills. The Marius Hills consist of 262 dome formations, 59 cone formations, and 20 rilles and ridges [e.g., Huang et al., 2011], suggesting that the region experienced significant volcanic activity. Previous studies have shown that the surface of Marius Hills is composed of multiple lava flows, with their formation ages differing widely according to the research: approximately 3.3 to 2.5 billion years ago [Boyce and Jonnson, 1978], and around 1.1 to 0.7 billion years [Huang et al., 2011]. Therefore, this study aims to estimate the surface age of Marius Hills based on crater counting. In this study, we utilized the LROC Quick Map [https://quickmap.lroc.asu.edu/] which allows for the mapping of lunar data obtained from NASA's LRO and other missions. Initially, we distinguished the regions of Marius Hills by using the TiO2 map from the LRO WAC and the FeO map from Kaguya/MI. The surface age was determined by statistical analysis of craters identified with SAOImageDS9 using craterstats 2.0, and applying the model of Neukum (1984). This presentation reports the preliminary results.

LROC Quick Map
[https://quickmap.lroc.asu.edu/]

SAOImageDS9
[https://sites.google.com/cfa.harvard.edu/saoimageds9]

craterstats 2.0
[https://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/en/geol/fachrichtungen/planet/software/_content/software/craterstats.html]