One of the issues faced by future fusion devices will be high target heat loads. Alternative divertors are a potential solution to the heat loads. They have been investigated in TCV and DIII-D, and will be investigated on MAST-U. To evaluate their effectiveness, accurate target heat flux and power balance measurements are required in these machines.Infrared (IR) thermography is a widely used technique to determine the target heat flux, but is susceptible to surface effects and emissivity in carbon-walled machines. In this work, the effect of plasma exposure on graphite is assessed to understand what may happen in MAST-U. A sample of MAST-U graphite is exposed to 30 minute plasma pulses,with n_e=6×10¹⁸m⁻³ and T_e=0.08 eV as measured by Thomson scattering. During these pulses, the temperature is measured by a medium wave IR camera and is seen to decrease by ≈70◦C over the course of 3 hours of plasma exposure. Pyrometer measurements suggest that the IR camera is affected by a change in the surface emissivity.Profilometry confirms the erosion of the graphite at the tile centre to a depth of ≈100 nm, and regions of deposition further out, amounting to ≈40 nm of material.