The Spherical Bolometric Albedo of Planet Mercury

Anthony Mallama
(Submitted on 8 Mar 2017)

Published reflectance data covering several different wavelength intervals has been combined and analyzed in order to determine the spherical bolometric albedo of Mercury. The resulting value of 0.088 +/- 0.003 spans wavelengths from 0 to 4 {\mu}m which includes over 99% of the solar flux. This bolometric result is greater than the value determined between 0.43 and 1.01 {\mu}m by Domingue et al. (2011, Planet. Space Sci., 59, 1853-1872). The difference is due to higher reflectivity at wavelengths beyond 1.01 {\mu}m. The average effective blackbody temperature of Mercury corresponding to the newly determined albedo is 436.3 K. This temperature takes into account the eccentricity of the planet’s orbit (M\’endez and Rivera-Valet\’in. 2017. ApJL, 837, L1).

Comments:    20 pages, 5 figures, 1 table
Subjects:    Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as:    arXiv:1703.02670 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1703.02670v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Anthony Mallama
[v1] Wed, 8 Mar 2017 02:03:35 GMT (676kb)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.02670