Event Details

Dr. Sean Marshall, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Arecibo Observatory will speak about "Radar Observations of Solar System Objects."

Radar observations provide unique information on solid objects within our solar system, including rocky planets, icy moons, and near-Earth asteroids. With radar, the observer controls the transmitted signal. Radar observations make it possible to see through clouds and into an object's subsurface. Radar data provide very fine measurements of an object's radial velocity and distance, and bright targets can be spatially resolved into images. With a sequence of delay-Doppler images, it is possible to find the target's size, shape, rotation state, and other properties.