The MODIS / Terra satellite image of the Gulf taken yesterday (May 24, 2010) is a relatively cloud-free look at the ongoing oil spill in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Areas covered by oil slick and sheen are marked with a solid orange line. Areas where we think there may be slicks and sheen, but our analysis is of lower confidence, are shown by dashed orange lines. All together, slicks and sheen are possibly covering as much as 28,958 square miles (75,000 km2). That's an area as big as the state of South Carolina:

(MODIS / Terra image, May 24, 2010, with SkyTruth analysis)

We also though it would be interesting to produce a matching version of this image with none of our annoying annotation:

It's Day 36 of this fatal incident. Our estimated spill rate of 1.1 million gallons (26,500 barrels) per day, now on the conservative end of the scientific estimates, leads us to conclude that almost 40 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf so far. BP and the federal government had said that they would announce a new official estimate of the daily spill rate on May 22, but we've heard nothing more about that. As far as we can tell, they are still claiming the spill rate is 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) per day. At that much lower rate, the total amount spilled would be 7.56 million gallons.

John Amos is a geologist and the president of SkyTruth. Read more here -->