Fine-resolution global scatterometer observations of Titan's surface

Details Fine-resolution global scatterometer observations of Titan's surface Fine-resolution global scatterometer observations of Titan's surface

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufm.p33e1801z&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #P33E-1801

Statistics

Computation

[5464] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Remote Sensing, [6281] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Titan

Scientific paper

The scatterometry mode of the Cassini RADAR is the premier dataset with which to investigate the scattering properties of Titan's surface. The scatterometry mode observes a wider range of incidence angles, has acquired near-global coverage, includes more robust radiometric calibration, and can discern features at lower signal levels than is possible with the fine-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mode. The downside to scatterometry analysis is that the real aperture surface footprints are much coarser than the SAR resolution. Here we present high-resolution backscatter maps derived from Cassini scatterometer observations at ~5-20 km resolution, coarser than the SAR observations (0.3-1km resolution) but finer than the 100 km resolution offered by real aperture scatterometer data reduction. These new products are made possible by analyzing the range delay and phase of the scatterometry measurements, rather than using the total beam-integrated power computation approach in real-aperture reduction. Cassini scatterometer data are acquired using a low-bandwidth chirp modulation on the transmitted signal, and each observation consists of a burst of about 8 transmit pulses. Using a coherent back projection algorithm, we process the data to improved resolution by about a factor of 10 in each dimension over real aperture values, although not all pass geometries have range/Doppler surface contours to support this resolution. Nonetheless, the finer resolution offered on well-contoured passes implies that we can estimate the backscatter curve for features much smaller than has been possible to date. The existence of multiple observations of each of these finer features means that we can better constrain surface roughness and dielectric constant properties than is possible from the SAR data alone, where limited observations exist of any single feature. Here we present initial reductions of the scatterometry data set and show that we can predict resolution performance by examining the range and Doppler contour diagrams from each pass. These images display moderate resolution Titan backscatter maps of areas not before imaged at fine resolution. The contour analysis in addition provides a way to schedule future Cassini observations of un-investigated areas in order to make the best use of spacecraft resources.

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