Surrounded by disco effects, with falling snow and atmospheric gravitational waves, Scylla and Charybdis are the protagonists of the shot from space chosen by e-Geos, a company created by Telespazio (80%) and the Italian Space Agency (20%), to celebrate International Mediterranean Day . The image was created by combining data acquired over a period of 6 months by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 1 Earth observation satellite.
The place of ancient myths, such as the sea monsters Scylla and Karidi also mentioned by Homer, and the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Messina is the narrow point of connection between the Ionian Sea and the Tyrrhenian Sea. In the multi-temporal image created thanks to Sentinel-1 radar mission data, much of Sicily and Calabria are clearly visible and all of the Aeolian Islands are clearly visible, upon which strong winds from the east produce turbulent tracks on the leeward side of the islands.
In the center of the image, along the Ionian coast of Calabria, a storm front can be observed, while south of the strait are trains of inland waves generated by currents and bathymetry specific to the region. Along the Tyrrhenian coast of Calabria, some areas of strong winds on the sea, placed at different locations in the different images, produce a “disco effect” in the multi-time image. Finally, the snow on Etna is clearly visible and in the area just above the strait, the so-called atmospheric gravitational waves can also be seen, that is, high-altitude oscillations of the air that cause certain ripples in the clouds.
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