  The surface granularity of small Solar System bodies is diverse through the
different types of planetary bodies and even for specific objects it is often
not known in detail. One of the physical properties that strongly depends on
the surface structure is the surface temperature. In highly porous media with
large voids, radiation can efficiently transport heat, whereas more compact,
micro-porous structures transport the heat primarily by conduction through the
solid material. In this work, we investigate under which conditions a
macro-porous surface can be distinguished from a micro-porous one by simply
measuring the surface temperature. In our numerical simulations, we included
circular and elliptical orbits with and without obliquity and varied the
rotation period of the considered objects. We found that daily temperature
cycles are rather insensitive to the specific surface granularity. However, the
surface temperature at sunrise shows significant dependency on the material
structure and this effect becomes even more pronounced when the solar intensity
increases. By measuring the sunrise temperature as a function of insolation at
noon, a differentiation between micro- and macro-granular surface structures is
possible. In this paper, we provide a strategy how remote sensing can be used
to derive the surface structure of small Solar System bodies.
