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Observations and Quantitative Compositional Analysis of Ceres, Pallas, and Hygiea Using JWST/NIRSpec

Ehlmann, Bethany L.; Rivkin, Andrew S.; Hammel, Heidi B. +6 more

We present JWST Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) measurements of the three largest low-albedo main-belt asteroids: (1) Ceres, (2) Pallas, and (10) Hygiea. Their reflectance spectra all have very similar absorptions centered near 2.72 µm attributed to Mg–OH in minerals. Within this band, Pallas also shows evidence of a sharper, deeper ban…