The
Satellite Antarctica Expedition 2008-2009 - 'SAE 08-09' took place
at the end of 2008 - the beginning of 2008 within the framework of the
'Image of the
Day' project performed by the Brockmann
Consult, Germany.
An Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) of the ENVISAT European satellite was used
as the initial information.
The purpose of the expedition was:
- To present the actual portrait of the most part of the Antarctic Coast of the Antarctic summer 2008-2009,
- To present several interesting structures of the inland Antarctic surface,
- To give a presentation of human activity in the Antarctic (roads and bases),
- And to present images of some icebergs and structures of the water surface near the Antarctic Coast.
The kind of information received by the radar’s antenna is influenced mostly by the following features of the radiated surface:
- roughness,
- the slope towards the radar’s ray,
- the relative static permittivity εr of a material under given conditions (mainly depending on the temperature of the material).
In general, the higher the material εr is, the stronger is the echo and the lighter it looks in the picture (under given conditions). However, as the spacecraft moves along in its orbit, the radar antenna transmits pulses very rapidly. It can therefore obtain many backscattered radar responses from a particular object while passing overhead. This causes the characteristic speckle effect in the resulting images.
The appearance of the surface types investigated in the ASAR images of the region of Antarctica can be summarized as follows:
- calm sea waters are usually dark-coloured,
- colder (because of fine ice) sea waters of low salinity (resulting from the melting ice) are usually lighter in colour,
- glaciers, coastal ice, pack-ice and most of the icebergs are usually light-coloured,
- the surfaces of the mountains situated on the coastal islands and on the coastline are usually very dark.
Different structures that are observed on the water are results of the water roughness caused by the wind and possibly, more seldom, by some phenomena within the ocean water.
To observe some peculiarities of the surface of the snow cover on the mountainous plateaus of Antarctica is possible first of all because of the unevenness of its relief on a scale of precision of 10 km.
More information about ASAR: ASAR FAQ.
In total 265 pairs of ASAR images are presented. They are available in JPEG format, being monochromatic and sometimes polychromatic. All the images are presented in the projection of the satellite scanner’s coordinate system ([number of scan line] x [number of scanned pixel])
- All large images have one and the same scale 1px=75м
- All smaller images have one and the same scale. 1px =375м.
For processing the satellite data the ESA BEAM software, developed and supported by the Brockmann Consult, was applied.
The operations were performed by the "participants of the expedition."
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