3 ms·

I feel like I'm about to ask an incredibly dumb question, but why does the radar image show such a pronounced crescent shape on the asteroid? What's causing th

• 3pt14159 15y ago
  I think it is the Doppler shift from the back scattered EM Imaging. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_shift http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_shift
• nitrogen 15y ago
  It's possible that those images show a side view generated from the radar response, rather than a front view. The pixel intensity could be sample intensity, so the more reflective surfaces there are at a distance Y, angle X, the brighter the pixel at (X, Y) will be. Since the back of the asteroid is shadowed by the front of the asteroid, the radar provides an image of the side facing the radar only. This is how I generate side and top view images from Kinect data in my lighting automation software, anyway (Shameless plug: see https://github.com/nitrogenlogic/kinradar https://github.com/nitrogenlogic/kinradar for an ancient ASCII art version you can play with, or http://www.nitrogenlogic.com/ http://www.nitrogenlogic.com/ for the real thing). I don't actually know how the NASA images were produced.