Advanced Illumination Modeling for Data Analysis and Calibration. Application to the Moon.

We present a new illumination modeling tool, called IllumNG, developed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). We describe its capabilities to enhance the analysis and calibration of science data collected by planetary missions. We highlight these with examples making use of lunar data, particularly the topographic and radiometric measurements collected by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) instrument, with applications to radiometric measurements from other LRO instruments as well. The unique features of IllumNG are its accuracy and flexibility to handle multiple types of observers and light sources, and its ability to accurately model both singly- and doubly-scattered radiation to an observer.