April 27
More than Meets the Eye: What radar reveals about planetary bodies
Speaker: Dr. Edgard Rivera-Valentín, JHU APL
Abstract: What can we learn about planetary bodies when we look beyond the visible? Radar imaging is a powerful remote sensing tool for investigating the near-surface of airless worlds by measuring how light scatters and transforms upon reflection, revealing properties such as roughness, surface and subsurface structure, and composition, even in regions hidden in shadow. From ground-based facilities like the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to space-based instruments such as Mini-RF, radar has been used to characterize near-Earth asteroids, the Moon, Mercury, and the icy moons of the outer Solar System. In this talk, I will introduce the fundamentals of radar imaging and polarimetry, and show how these techniques enable both the characterization of potentially hazardous asteroids and the exploration of planetary bodies for future robotic and human missions.
Host: Ben Sharkey