View from space of the oil slick created by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. When this image was taken, three months after the explosion on the rig, the leak had been plugged for eight days. Due to sunglint, water surfaces appear bright and land surfaces appear dark in the image. The sunglint reveals various features in the Gulf of Mexico, especially sheens of oil that appear as packets of long bright streaks (image right). Sediments carried by the Mississippi River have a pale beige coloration in this image, with distinct margins between plumes that likely mark tidal pulses of river water into the Gulf of Mexico.
