Imaging the Moon with the Jicamarca radar at 6-meter wavelength

Depolarized radar image of the northern and southern hemisphere of the Moon with 6-meter wavelength.

Last week our paper on interferometric radar imaging the Moon with 6-meter wavelength was accepted for publication in the journal Icarus. The observations were done using the Jicamarca Radio Observatory 49.92 MHz radar in Peru. You can read the preprint here. The paper started out as a bachelors thesis project, but the scope of the project ended up being much larger than originally thought. The main findings of the work are two large "cryptomare" regions on the lunar surface. On the northern hemisphere, Mare Imbrium, Mare Frigoris, and Oceanus Procellarum all appear as one large mare (basaltic plane) region on lunar maps. There is also a dark spot on the radar images in the southern hemisphere in the Schiller-Schickard region coinciding with an old impact basin, indicating the volcanic flows in this region.

New follow-up observations were done at Jicamarca this week. Stay tuned.