Archaic Wrote:
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> Great description of the process. Azimuth is very
> narrow then, eh?

Yes kind of..
It isn't actually a 'scan' or 'scanning' process in the strict technical meaning of the word. More of a sound bite for the visual display or visualisation of a non visible phenomena. In the same way that radar does.
Scan is probably a publicity or marketing department term..

The simplest analogy would be to imagine yourself face up on the HP floor.. looking up, while wearing wide angle X-ray goggles. You can see everything that is inside the pyramid, in fact you may even see the odd illusion but nothing can hide.
The downside is the goggles are only two dimensional so you can't see in 3D. You have no depth perception.
Therefore if an object were sitting at an oblique angle to your line of sight you wouldn't be able to determine it's orientation. You'd just know that it sat on that line of sight.
Which is why they have published a number of estimated orientations.