[X] My Assistant

[alan]

Are there plans to use the SAR on any moons other than Titan? I think it could be useful to compare the SAR images of with visible images of an icy moon that can be seen at high resolution, particularly since before Cassini its only been used on Earth and Venus.

[Decepticon]

I'm not sure but I thought Iapetus during dec 31 had one?!

I have seen no talk of this yet.

[Gsnorgathon]

Well, there's radar, and there's radar. I don't have all the gory details at hand (time to do some reading!), but IIRC there are four modes: radiometry (a sort of passive listening mode), scatterometry, altimetry, and the nifty-keen-o synthetic aperture mode that provides us with the cool images of Ganesa Macula, Circus Maximus, the cat scratches, and so forth. The Iapetus flyby used radar for scatterometry, but was too far away for altimetry or imaging.

My understanding of all this is perhaps more than a bit vague, and I need to be heading to bed now, so take that as a basis for research, not actual information... :@)

[Decepticon]

Learn soemthing new every day.

Well, there's radar, and there's radar. I don't have all the gory details at hand (time to do some reading!), but IIRC there are four modes: radiometry (a sort of passive listening mode), scatterometry, altimetry, and the nifty-keen-o synthetic aperture mode that provides us with the cool images of Ganesa Macula, Circus Maximus, the cat scratches, and so forth. The Iapetus flyby used radar for scatterometry, but was too far away for altimetry or imaging.

My understanding of all this is perhaps more than a bit vague, and I need to be heading to bed now, so take that as a basis for research, not actual information... :@)