Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD
@ericjfielding.bsky.social
99 followers 96 following 47 posts
Geophysicist at lab in Pasadena, California. Statements and opinions posted by me are my own and not those of my employer. he/him. Also at https://mastodon.social/@EricFielding Research: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6648-8067
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Reposted by Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD
stim3on.bsky.social
Last night, NASA's Perseverance rover looked up at the night sky once more, to capture interstellar #comet 3I/Atlas flying by the red planet.

The distance was "only" 0.2 AU or 30 Mio km, far closer than the comet ever got to Earth. 🔭 #3IAtlas

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/Simeon Schmauß
Reposted by Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD
stim3on.bsky.social
No Avi, that Perseverance Navcam picture you posted isn't showing 3I/Atlas, it's just Phobos, the brighter one of Mars' moons.

If you were even half the expert you think you are, this possibility should have been quite obvious and worth mentioning.
Reposted by Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD
megschwamb.bsky.social
This is complete and utter pompous bullshit. It's telling that of the people proposing it wants to anoint themselves director general when every one of his claims of having discovered technosignature interstellar objects has been debunked by the planetary community. arxiv.org/pdf/2510.01405
arxiv.org
ericjfielding.bsky.social
I assume the Trump Administration found a way to pay the farmers for the food even if they did not deliver it to the food banks.
Reposted by Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD
marcofoster.bsky.social
Mark Kelly: “lf you are undocumented in our country, you cannot get healthcare from the Affordable Care Act exchange. You are not eligible for Medicare. You are not eligible for Medicaid. They’re just making that up. They just like to blame brown people.”
Reposted by Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD
murray.senate.gov
Here are all the states Russ Vought announced just today he would be illegally stealing taxpayer dollars from.

Have we ever had a President work so hard to hurt the people he represents? I'm not going to be intimidated by these crooks.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
The first NISAR (NASA-ISRO SAR) L-band radar images now released! Early images acquired before NISAR reached the final science orbit. The mountains of Mount Desert Island in Maine, USA, are beautiful. I first visited Mount Desert Island with my family when I was small.
www.nasa.gov/news-release...
NASA-ISRO Satellite Sends First Radar Images of Earth’s Surface - NASA
The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Earth-observing radar satellite’s first images of our planet’s surface are in, and they offer a glimpse of
www.nasa.gov
ericjfielding.bsky.social
NASA’s Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing (OPERA) project released the Troposphere Zenith Radar Delays (TROPO) dataset that allows InSAR users to reduce effects of atmospheric propagation delays for improved measurement of ground motion. www.earthdata.nasa.gov/news/nasas-o...
NASA's OPERA Project Releases Troposphere Zenith Radar Delays Dataset | NASA Earthdata
This mission-agnostic dataset allows scientists to enhance airborne and spaceborne radar measurements by reducing the atmospheric noise that can obscure ground motion signals.
www.earthdata.nasa.gov
Reposted by Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD
jonahblank.bsky.social
Whoever wrote this @washingtonpost.com editorial has no understanding of military affairs-- and has not been reading two decades of the Post's coverage of the war in #Afghanistan:
♦️There is no way to hold #Bagram without the cooperation of the Taliban, or a Berlin Airlift level of resupply.

Brief 🧵
jfallows.bsky.social
Insanity.

AKA, official editorial position of the WaPo.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
Headline: "A US return to Bagram isn't a bad idea."
ericjfielding.bsky.social
Yes, that is an excellent animation of the ERS-1/2 time series. Someone should redo it with Sentinel-1 data.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
I don't know if they have posted the explanation yet. An official Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document should be included with the tool release.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
That is a very strange texture on the surface of the rock. I would guess that rock has an interesting history.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
The OPERA DISP-S1 products do not have tropospheric corrections in the product. They decided to make a tool for generating the corrections separately and it will be released soon.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
What spatial scale variation of soil moisture are you trying to measure? The tropospheric water vapor variation is stronger at the larger scales, with little variation at scales less than 2-5 km.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
Yes, the NISAR data will be available to everyone for free when it is released.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
The NISAR satellite is still in commissioning phase, with the planned completion at the end of October. The data will be released during the science phase starting in November.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
I don’t know what you were hoping to measure, but it looks like there is no surface displacement in that area above the level of atmospheric noise.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
Interesting results from looking at the polarization signatures. I don’t know what the phase between the VV and VH polarization indicates. It might tell whether there is a strong double-bounce component of the radar return that means there is an object with vertical surface close to the ground.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
The SAR system records the time of the reflection that is proportional to the distance from the satellite. We can measure height above a reference surface with the phase from two radar images such as SRTM two antennas or the bistatic TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
A radar satellite sends out a pulse and only records the return during a short time interval that is the expected distance to the surface. My guess is that return is more likely a train or possibly a low-flying airplane.
ericjfielding.bsky.social
Yes, I see there is a bright radar return with a linear pattern on that Sentinel-1 image, but I don't think it is another satellite flying beneath the Sentinel-1 satellite. SAR range direction is literally distance from the antenna, and only objects with range close to the surface will be recorded
ericjfielding.bsky.social
One additional point about Dolphin is that it is not a part of ISCE2 and is independent of the InSAR processing system used to make a stack of coregistered SLC images. The JPL OPERA project uses ISCE3 and Dolphin to make the OPERA DISP-S1 products.