Oil Spill Off Korea

by Nasa

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Oil Spill Off Korea

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Nasa

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Crude oil from the wrecked 146,000-ton tanker, Hebei Spirit, is seen polluting the sea off South Korea in this Envisat image, provided by the European Space Agency. The image was acquired on December 11, 2007, at 1040 am, local time (0140 UTC) by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) aboard ESA's Envisat satellite. The presence of oil on the sea surface damps down smaller wind generated waves. It is these waves that reflect the radar signal back to the satellite. When they are damped, the reflected power measured by the radar is reduced, causing oil slicks to be seen as dark areas on an otherwise brighter sea. In this image, the dark oil covers the coastal waters of the Yellow Sea southwest of Seoul, Korea. More than 10,000 tons of oil from the tanker were reported to have leaked into the sea after the ship collided with another vessel on Friday, December 7, 2007. As the image shows, the oil washed onto the beaches. The South Korean government declared the coastal regions shown here disaster areas. Like other space-based radar instruments, ASAR essentially provides its own source of illumination and operates at longer wavelengths than optical sensors. This enables it to observe the Earth's surface at night and through thick cloud cover.

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March 7th, 2013

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