NASA faces challenges tracking oil spill

Learn more about the variables affecting picture-taking

Taking photos of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from space isn’t as easy as you might think.

Though NASA has satellites that take images of the Gulf daily, a whole slew of variables – cloud cover, water smoothness and sunglint, the reflection of sunlight off the surface – make getting high-quality and scientifically meaningful images of surface oil in the Gulf an inconsistent process, NPR reports.

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