Mineralogy of crater Haulani on dwarf planet Ceres

On dwarf planet Ceres, several high-albedo units are visible at the local scale. Haulani crater, located in the equatorial quadrangle having the same name, is one of the notable bright units highlighted by the Dawn spacecraft since its first approach to Ceres in early 2015. Due to the images obtained by the Dawn Framing Camera, it was possible to reveal that Haulani's bright material displays a very small or even negative ("blue") spectral slope in the range from the visible to the near infrared light, which is a peculiar occurrence compared to the average surface of Ceres.Hyperspectral images returned by the Visible and InfraRed mapping spectrometer (VIR) onboard Dawn enabled a detailed mineralogical analysis of the Haulani crater area. Already at the spatial resolution of the Survey phase (~1.1 km/px), and even more so during HAMO (~0.38 km/px) and LAMO (~0.10 km/px) mission phases, Haulani crater shows considerable spectral variability. The spectral features centered at 2.7 and 3.06 µm, respectively indicative of the presence of hydrous minerals and ammoniated phyllosilicates, show a decrease of band depth in the floor and in the bright ejecta corresponding to the blue spectral slope. Spectral signatures at 3.4 and ~4 µm, indicative of carbonates, also show a moderate variability. Finally, Haulani shows the highest thermal contrast over the entire surface of Ceres, which may be linked to the albedo and texture of the material excavated by the impact, combined with its compactness in specific areas such as pitted terrain.The application of a spectral unmixing model on VIR data acquired in Survey and HAMO suggests that the observed spectral variations might be due to substantial differences in grain size, rather than to significant variations in composition. However, a comprehensive analysis shall include LAMO data acquired at higher pixel resolution.AcknowledgementsThis work is supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI). VIR was funded and coordinated by the Italian Space Agency, with the scientific leadership of the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, Italy. Support of the Dawn Science, Instrument, and Operation Teams is gratefully acknowledged