Asteroid Radar Astronomy
Much of Dr. Ostro's career focused on the development of asteroid radar astronomy. In early experiments, such as the first radar detection of Ceres, radar observations of asteroids were restricted to measurements of Doppler shifts and radar cross-sections. Beginning in the early 1980s, Ostro led the development of radar imaging and shape-reconstruction techniques, first determining only outer limits of targets' shapes, then deriving three-dimensional shape models. From August 19 to 22 of 1989, Ostro and Scott Hudson observed the contact binary 4769 Castalia from the Arecibo Observatory, producing the first resolved radar images of an asteroid, which they later used to construct a model of the object.
Following the further development of imaging and shape reconstruction techniques by Ostro, Hudson, and Christopher Magri and the upgrade of Arecibo in the mid-1990s, the number of radar observations has increased dramatically.
Read more about this topic: Steven J. Ostro
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