Thomas Ager: The Essentials of SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) - MBM#60

Minds Behind Maps

Thomas Ager worked for 30y at the National Geospatial Agency on Radar satellite images and recently released ‘The Essentials of SAR’ a book breaking down Synthetic Aperture Radar for, as he puts it, “non electrical engineers”

Sponsor: Planet

Find more about accessing Planet's high resolution & high frequency images

About Tom

• LinkedIn
• His book: The Essentials of SAR (Affiliate Link)
  • Also available in Mandarin

Shownotes

Note: Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you buy any of these books.

• My Interview with Iain Woodhouse: Understanding Radar Satellite Images
• Tom’s interview on Project Geospatial
• Mapping London’s deformation
• 70cm mapping of the Moon
• Book (and poem!) recommendation
  • Who Is Fourier? (Affiliate Link)
  • Project Geospatial: https://www.youtube.com/@Projectgeospatial
  • Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas

Timestamps

(00:00) - Introduction

(01:13) - Sponsor: Planet

(02:28) - Tom describes himself

(04:13) - National Geospatial Agency

(05:46) - Why should anyone care about radar images?

(09:52) - Why not just fly plane?

(10:54) - SAR in the 80s

(23:14) - Finding early use in SAR

(27:09) - Skepticism in new tech

(30:09) - Phase

(35:32) - Bringing poetry to physics

(42:01) - The most astonishing element of SAR

(48:41) - Future of SAR

(51:51) - The next step

(56:49) - The language issue

(59:45) - Tom's book

(01:02:46) - Tom's book dedication

(01:04:49) - Teaching

(01:07:40) - Getting NGA's approval on the book

(01:09:09) - Doing what people tell you not to do

(01:11:34) - Machine Learning in SAR

(01:15:55) - Book & Podcast recommendation

• Support the podcast on Patreon
• My video on an introduction to satellite images
• Website
• My Twitter
• Podcast Twitter
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• Edited by Peter Xiong
• Find more of his work