There's a golden/brown toned band right across the picture. I thought it was the sun but when the picture is enlarged, Im wondering if it's oil.

Don't worry, we've been over this before. The band across the whole gulf is not oil, just light intensity for when that satellite image was taken. You could look back through past days and see it moving around the gulf. That shouldn't diminish how serious the visible oil leak is. I'm more interested in seeing how massive the 'undersea/invisible' oil plumes are.