Journal ArticleDOI
The Bakerian Lecture, 1986. Ships from Space
TLDR
In this article, the authors interpret the observed features in terms of sun glitter from the tilted facets of a Kelvin wake, and regard the present study as a step towards the interpretation of many unexplained naturally occurring features at the edge of the Sun glitter.Abstract:
Narrow V-shaped wakes extending some 20 km behind surface ships were first found on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images from SEASAT in 1978. The V-wake geometry differed strikingly from the traditional Kelvin wake geometry consisting of divergent and transverse wave components generated by a travelling pressure point. The SAR images can be accounted for in terms of Bragg scatter from relatively short waves generated by the surface vessel. An essential ingredient of this hypothesis is that the wave generation is by an intermittent rather than a steady point source. Optical images from a hand-held camera on a 1985 space shuttle mission revealed many V-like wakes behind surface ships. There is no Bragg scattering from the ocean surface at optical wavelengths, so an alternative hypothesis is called for. We can interpret the observed features in terms of sun glitter from the tilted facets of a Kelvin wake. An essential ingredient is the generation by complex sources rather than by a single point source. We regard the present study as a step towards the interpretation of many unexplained naturally occurring features at the edge of the Sun glitter.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Recent Trend and Advance of Synthetic Aperture Radar with Selected Topics
TL;DR: A short review is presented on the recent trend and development of SAR and related techniques with selected topics, including the fields of applications, specifications of airborne and spaceborne SARs, and information contents in and interpretations of amplitude data, interferometric SAR (InSar) data, and polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ship wakes and their radar images
Arthur M. Reed,Jerome H. Milgram +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a survey of remotely sensed wake images, the systems that have collected these images, and an overview of the theory of Kelvin wakes, a primary source of the phenomena that cause the dark centerline and bright V-images.
Journal ArticleDOI
The role of the critical angle in brightness reversals on sunglint images of the sea surface
TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce the concept of critical sensor viewing angle, defined as the sensor zenith angle at which different sea surface roughness variances produce identical sunglint radiance.
Journal ArticleDOI
Nonlinear Components of Ship Wake Waves
TL;DR: In this article, an overview of the nonlinear parts of a ship's wake is presented, including the very narrow V-like wake components, packets of monochromatic waves, ship-generated depression areas, and supercritical bores.
Journal ArticleDOI
Dynamical processes of transfer at the sea surface
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the dynamical processes of transport from, and immediately below, the sea surface, particularly those which involve convergence and the separation of flow, and which result in the renewal of surface water at horizontal scales ranging from millimeters to hundreds of meters.
References
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Slopes of the sea surface deduced from photographs of sun glitter - eScholarship
Charles S. Cox,Walter Munk +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the distribution of brightness of sun glitter on the sea surface is interpreted in terms of the statistics of the sea-surface slope distribution, and the method consists of two phases: (I) identifying, from the law of reflection, any point on the surface with the particular slope required to reflect the sun's rays toward the observer, and (II) interpreting the average brightness of the seafloor in the vicinity of this point, and interpreting the frequency with which this particular slope occurs.
Navy Oceanographer Shuttle Observations, STS 41-G Mission Report
TL;DR: A summary of the space shuttle Challenger Mission 41-G, 5-13 October 1984, from the point of view of the author who was the first oceanographer in space aboard that flight is given in this article.
Using Ship Wake Patterns to Evaluate SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) Ocean Wave Imaging Mechanisms. Joint U.S.-Canadian Ocean Wave Investigation Project.
TL;DR: The Joint Ocean Wave Investigation Project (JOWIP) was conducted to evaluate the detectability of ocean wave structures on imaging synthetic aperture radar (SAR) using Kelvin surface ship wake patterns generated under controlled and well documented surface environmental conditions to isolate SAR image parameters as mentioned in this paper.