Revisiting the Interpretation of Thorium Abundances at Hansteen Alpha

Hansteen Alpha is one of the few remaining locations on the Moon thought to be formed by highlands volcanism. Hansteen Alpha is a triangular shaped feature located in the southern portion of Oceanus Procellarum (12 degrees W, 50 degrees S) and its size is approximately 25 km on each side. As described by Hawke et al., there is clear evidence that: 1) Hansteen Alpha was emplaced by extrusive volcanic processes; and 2) it was formed by a viscous lava that should be enriched in Th. However, in the study of Hawke et al. using available Lunar Prospector (LP) Th data, it was concluded that the Hansteen Alpha region was not greatly enriched in Th as would be expected for a highly evolved, viscous lava. It was further concluded based on other compositional data that the magma that formed Hansteen Alpha did not correspond to any known rock type. Here we revisit the interpretation of Th abundances at Hansteen Alpha for a couple of reasons. First, the size of Hansteen Alpha is smaller than the spatial resolution of the LP Gamma-ray Spectrometer (LP-GRS) from which the Th abundances were derived. Therefore, the LP-GRS pixels covering Hansteen Alpha may not truly represent the Th abundance of the Hansteen Alpha feature. Second, recent work has led to a much greater understanding of the Th spatial distribution for small-area features on the lunar surface. In particular, using forward modeling techniques, we have developed the ability to obtain information about Th abundances for features that are at or smaller than the FWHM spatial resolution (approximately [80 square kilometers]) of the LP-GRS data.