How Radar Satellites See through Clouds (Synthetic Aperture Radar Explained)

What is Synthetic Aperture Radar, and what the heck are radar satellite images?

-- Find Me --
Listen to conversations with experts in mapping & satellite images: @mindsbehindmaps

-- Credits --
- Intro music by Peter Xiong
- All the good looking 2D animations (and the 3D animation of the intro) by Abram Hodgens
(All the less good looking 2D animation, by me)
The rest of the music in this episode is from Epidemic Sound

-- Timestamps --
00:00 - Intro
00:58 - Let's do this as a story
02:48 - Basics of Radar
04:32 - Making an Image
07:34 - Synthetic Aperture Radar
11:24 - Not necessarily squared pixels
14:50 - Phase
19:22 - Conclusion
20:49 - Patreon & Thank You

[MaxLenormand]

Also, some mistakes spotted by viewers:
- All the early animations explaining the basics of radar have a typo in them: It's "Received Energy", not "Recieved". This one's painful because it appears so many times
- 7:43 has another typo, "Synthetic" Aperture Radar.

Thanks to everyone for keeping me accountable and pointing these errors out!

[spacefromspace]

Man you really nailed this video! Everytime someone asks me about SAR from now on I'll be linking this to them. Looking forward to seeing more!

[darrenmuff]

Really great explanation Maxime! The most comprehensive (and entertaining) video on the subject of SAR. This should be essential viewing for anyone getting into Earth Observation.

[daviddemeij]

Great explanation on SAR, after working with geospatial data for 5 years I finally understand it now 😁

[justanotherperson]

This is actually a really well-explained video, Max. Another awesome example of SAR engineering and the associated mission planning (I felt) is TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X. The mission planning and orbit geometry maintenance is genuinely interesting. As an FD Engineer, I find these type of "complicated" missions to be very interesting in general, over optical payloads.

[Space_Parrot]

SAR can see into buildings the same way when you bounce a ball under a table and strike the underside of the table, the ball bounces back to where it was thrown, never through the table. If a building has an opening wide enough the microwaves can bounce back out the opening and return an image of what was inside. Think like a jet in a hangar.

[thesplatstrategist]

Incredible video quality, and learned so much about SAR

[md.labibarefinbari]

thank you for this brief but clear explanation!

[VladimirSuravtsov]

Wow, this is fantastic video! Thank you! So glad I stumbled on this channel. Never heard of SARs before, only knew of radar telescope arrays.

[leonardomollmannscholler]

Amazing video! Im glad I found this wealth of knowledge, will devour everything to help me write my thesis about SAR applications in agriculture!

[randmroman]

What a great Video! So well explained in such a short time! Thank you very much 💪

[LunarGlow]

People running these teams should consider getting a radiologist on board. Radiologist live and breath analyzing information like this. They might make valuable contribution to testing these kind of approaches

[thomasdimartino]

I am totally un-phase-d of your success Max, this is one heck of a content!

[skyfi-app]

This video is way cooler than being able to download free SAR imagery through SkyFi!

[MOBILE]

This really helped me understand SAR more! Thanks!

[Teh-Penguin]

Thanks for the video! Learned a few things I didn't know and this came just right as I begin working with the stuff.

[justanotherperson]

@19:00 Is there a way to reduce the "multipath" effects on SAR images? Perhaps the Remote sensing engineers use filtering of wrongly polarised reflected signal like used in GNSS?

Edit: after a few more seconds of thought based on very limited knowledge on the topic, some materials may react differently to specific polarisation right? Probably may not be very useful in general but maybe useful for material characterisation?

[justinoser]

Incredible video! 👏 I’m working on looking for a job in the space sector and SAR is something I’ve become fascinated by. I’ve read up on it a bit and started reading Thomas Ager’s “The Essentials of SAR.” Having explanations with visuals like this really helped to reinforce and unlock that knowledge. Thank you!

[alejandrovillanueva]

What a great video, looking forward for the nexts ones.

[kamchrkri]

Such a great video and explanation! Helps me in geodetic earth observation seminar at university:)