Emily has written a very nice blog entry on
The paper on T3 SAR swath. What got me intrigued is this little bit:
QUOTE
Also somewhat mysterious is the fact that the paper doesn't mention the altimetric data at all. The RADAR instrument gathers altimetric data on each end of nearly every SAR swath. The fact that it's not published here likely means that something is making it hard for them to make sense of the data. I am very curious about that story!
This reminds me of another writeup she made of a
conversation with Ralph Lorenz in which she also inquired about radar altimetry:
QUOTE
Altimetry, I asked? The public hasn't been shown much altimetry data from the Cassini RADAR instrument yet. There is supposed to be a little burst of altimetry data on each end of the SAR images, so there should be data available; the fact that we haven't been shown it indicates that the RADAR team is not finding it as easy to calibrate their altimetric data as it is to produce the SAR images, which they seem to be able to spit out within hours or days of a flyby. Ralph laughed and said "There's a story developing but that's all I can tell you. The guys are basically doing things that we've got no right to get away with doing with SAR data but the results may be worth sticking our necks out for."
While both entries concern different SAR swaths, I'm really intrigued by this "coverup", wondering what they might be secretly cooking up?