Ceres photometric properties from VIR on Dawn

Dawn spacecraft [1] entered orbit around Ceres on 6 March 2015. During the approach phase to this dwarf planet and later, through the Survey, High Altitude Mapping (HAMO) and Low Altitude Mapping Orbits (LAMO), the Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIR) will perform detailed observations of the surface of the body. VIR [2] is an imaging spectrometer onboard the Dawn mission and it is composed of two spectral channels: the visible (VIS) covering the 0.25 μm - 1.0 μm wavelength range and the infrared (IR) for the 0.95 μm - 5.0 μm interval. During the various phases of the mission, the surface of Ceres will be observed under different observation geometries. The measured signal is then affected by photometric issues that need to be minimized in order to exploit the intrinsic spectral variability of the surface, thus allowing the direct comparison between acquisitions taken under different observation conditions. In order to accomplish this task we perform a photometric reduction of the dataset by means of a simplified Hapke model, following the approach of [3]