A.S.I. - Agenzia Spaziale Italiana - The road to Space goes through Italy.

06 Apr 2009

The ASI satellite system for Earth Observation, COSMO-SkyMed, is acquiring the first images of the area struck by an earthquake (magnitudo 5.8 Richter) during the night between Sunday and Monday.

The image shown here next was obtained by comparing an earlier image, captured before the seismic event, and one taken on Tuesday morning. The earlier image was artificially coloured in red, the later one in blue. The white areas correspond to those unchanged by the earthquake. The red spots are objects that appeared in the pre-seismic image but not in the post-seismic one, probably corresponding to collapsed buildings.

Conversely, the blue/green areas reflected the radar signal in the second image but not in the first, so they may correspond to signficant movements too. COSMO-SkyMed will keep providing images over the next days, allowing the Civil Protection Department to locate possible damages to be subsequently checked by air or helicopter.

• »The same image in hi-res version