Radar Determination of the Scattering Properties of the Moon

INFORMATION about the scattering properties of the Moon's surface has been deduced by Evans 1 from the rapid fading of lunar radio echoes. His results were obtained by picturing the surface as an assembly of randomly spaced scatterers. Such a concept, however, does not take into consideration the distribution in depth of the scattering elements. An approach which does so is that adopted by Feinstein 2 , who used Huygens's principle to study the general problem of reflexion from a plane surface having random irregularities that are a function both of the space co-ordinates and of time. With minor modifications to take into account the curvature of the reflecting surface, Feinstein's results may be applied to lunar radio echoes.