Date:  Wednesday, February 7, 1996
Time:  4:15 PM ­ Refreshments at 4:00
Location:  ERL 126


High Resolution Topography of Venus: 
Radar Stereo Mapping from Magellan

Dr. Scott Hensley,
JPL

Abstract

The Magellan radar arrived at Venus in August 1989 and began a 2 year extensive 
mapping of the planet's surface using an S-band synthetic aperture radar,
altimeter, and radiometer. The resolution of the SAR was an order of magnitude
better than previous mapping missions and varied from 300 m at the poles to
100 m near the equator. In order to obtain topographic information of finer
detail than provided by the radar altimeter stereo image pairs were obtained
for approximately 30% of the planet's surface. The highly elliptical orbit of
the Magellan spacecraft coupled the burst mode operation of the radar and the
thick Venusian atmosphere presented a number of novel problems not normally
encountered in standard stereo processing. In this talk an overview of an
automated stereo processing algorithm for producing topographic maps and
associated height error estimates are presented.


Biography: Dr. Scott Hensley received his BS degrees and Math and Physics from
the University of California at Irvine and his PhD in Mathematics from SUNY at
Stony Brook where he specialized in differential geometry. At Hughes aircraft
he got his first introduction to radar working on a variety of radar systems
and applications including the Magellan radar system. Dr. Hensley currently
works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory concentrating in interferoemtric
research involving both aircraft and spacecraft systems.