Just five months ago, SkyTruth’s President testified to Congress about the risks posed by offshore drilling. Now we’re seeing a catastrophic spill in the Gulf that could soon surpass the sorry benchmark set 20 years ago by the 11-million-gallon Exxon Valdez spill. SkyTruth is beginning to get radar satellite images showing the oil slick from […]
Based on SkyTruth’s latest satellite observations today of the size of the oil slick and published data on the thickness of floating oil at sea that produces a visible sheen (1 micron, or 0.000001 meters) we think the official estimate of the spill rate from the damaged well has been significantly too low. Immediately after […]
We just processed a NASA/MODIS image taken from the Terra satellite this afternoon that shows slicks spread across 2,233 square miles, and within 22 miles of shore. See it here. The image suffers from clouds and haze (a problem we don’t have to deal with on radar images) so we used somewhat more sophisticated spectral […]
We just got a detailed ALI satellite image from NASA that was shot two days ago, on April 25, when the oil slick was about 817 square miles in size (it has since more than doubled to at least 1,800 square miles). You can see several response vessels working at the periphery of the slick. […]
SkyTruth just processed a NASA/MODIS satellite image of the Gulf of Mexico that was taken early yesterday afternoon (April 25). Slicks and sheen (very thin slick) covers about 817 square miles, and reaches 50 miles away from the assumed point of origin (the site of the leaking well on the seafloor). We’ve posted this in […]