Sentinel’s salty scan

Views: 275 - Rating: 5.00 /5 ( 6 votes cast) - Comments: 0 Thank you for rating! You have already rated this page, you can only rate it once! Your rating has been changed, thanks for rating! - Title Radar image of the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia Released 09/05/2014 10:00 am Copyright ESA Description - This radar image is one of the first from the Sentinel-1A satellite, acquired on 20 April - less than three weeks after its launch on 3 April. The image shows the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, which is the largest salt flat in the world. Occupying over 10 000 sq km, the vast Salar de Uyuni lies at the southern end of the Altiplano, a high plain of inland drainage in the central Andes. Some 40 000 years ago, this area was part of a giant prehistoric lake that dried out, leaving behind the salt flat. While the salt flat appears an almost homogenous white in optical satellite imagery, here we see it in shades of grey, and it looks almost like a lake. This has to do with how the radar signal reacts to different surfaces: areas where the radar signal is absorbed appear darker, while areas where the signal is reflected back to the satellite appear lighter. This gives Earth observation experts an indication of how rough or smooth the surfaces area, differences in salt density or even the presence of water.