* Astronomy

More than 140 scientists and researchers from 22 countries have attended the weeklong POLinSAR 2007 workshop, “Science and Applications of SAR Polarimetry and Polarimetric Interferometry,” hosted at ESRIN, ESA’s Earth Observation centre in Frascati, Italy, to hear the first space borne results and to attend interactive training sessions.
Polarimetric interferometry is performed using two polarimetric SAR images acquired from slightly different directions. The study of these data sets permits us to retrieve information related to the 3-D structure of forest or other natural volume scatterers, such as underlying topography, forest height and to estimate forest biomass – a quantitative estimate of the entire amount of organic material in a particular forest habitat.
Workshop participants saw the first POLinSAR in-orbit results from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS). Launched on 24 January 2006, ALOS is supported as an ESA Third Party Mission.

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