Altimetric and Radiometric, Low Frequency Data

Description

This data set, provided by the principal investigator, contains the final altimeter and radiometer data from the Radar Mapper instrument. The data set is on ASCII magnetic tape created on an IBM 370 computer. The tape contains 2 files. The first file contains 15 parameters of periapsis orbital data. The second file contains 25 parameters related to the radar and radiometer measurements. Some of the parameters on the second file are the date and time of the observations, the latitude and longitude of the measurements, the radiometer voltage reading, the radiometer background reading, the planet brightness temperature, the planetary radius measured by the altimeter, the formal error of the measurements, and various correlation coefficients. Comprehensive documentation for this data set, including a detailed description of the tape, is available from NSSDC. A discussion of the measurements is given in "Pioneer Venus Radar Results: Altimetry and Surface Properties," J. Geophys. Res., 85, 8261 (1980). This data set completely supercedes data set 78-051A-02C, Radar Altimetry Composite Data. The corrections made to the Composite data are described in the accompanying document "Pioneer Venus Hypsometry" (B43747-000A).