![The Earth seen from Apollo 17](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg)
''The Blue Marble'' is an image of
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
taken on December 7, 1972, from a distance of around from the planet's surface.
Taken by the crew of the
Apollo 17
Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon or traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on ...
spacecraft on its way to the
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
, it is one of the most reproduced images in history.
It mainly shows Earth from the
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ea ...
to
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...
. This was the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south
polar ice cap
A polar ice cap or polar cap is a high-latitude region of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite that is covered in ice.
There are no requirements with respect to size or composition for a body of ice to be termed a polar ice cap, nor a ...
, despite the
Southern Hemisphere being heavily
covered in clouds. In addition to the
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate ...
and
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
, almost the entire coastline of
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
and most of the
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...
are clearly visible,
A Cyclone in the Indian Ocean is also visible, The
South Asia
South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.;;;;;;;; ...
n mainland is on the eastern limb.
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
has also applied the name to a 2012 series of images which cover the entire globe at relatively high resolution. These were created by looking through
satellite pictures taken over time in order to find as many cloudless photographs as possible to use in the final images. NASA has verified all images of the 2012 "blue marble" are composites as they cannot get far enough away and have to combine multiple photos together. Likewise, these images do not fit together properly and due to lighting, weather and cloud interference it is impossible to collect cohesive or fully clear images to begin with.
The photograph
![The Blue Marble (remastered)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/The_Blue_Marble_%28remastered%29.jpg)
The photograph, taken on December 7, 1972, is one of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence.
The astronauts had the Sun above
[ From astronaut Schmitt stating that Earth was beneath them.] them when they took the image. To the
astronaut
An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...
s, the slightly
gibbous
Concerning the lunar month of ~29.53 days as viewed from Earth, the lunar phase or Moon phase is the shape of the Moon's directly sunlit portion, which can be expressed quantitatively using areas or angles, or described qualitatively using the t ...
Earth had the appearance and size of a glass
marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite. Marble is typically not Foliation (geology), foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the ...
, hence the name.
History
Context
''The Blue Marble'' was not the
first clear color image taken of an illuminated face of Earth, since such images by satellites had already been made and released as early as 1967,
and is the second time such a photo was taken by a person after the 1968 photograph ''
Earthrise
''Earthrise'' is a photograph of Earth and some of the Moon's surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. Nature photographer Galen Rowell described it as "the most infl ...
'' taken by
William Anders
William Alison Anders (born 17 October 1933) is a retired United States Air Force (USAF) major general, former electrical engineer, nuclear engineer, NASA astronaut, and businessman. In December 1968, he was a member of the crew of Apollo 8, ...
of
Apollo 8
Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968) was the first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times without landing, and then departed safely back to Earth. These ...
.
Before the ''Blue Marble'' a picture of the fully illuminated Earth by the
ATS-3
Applications Technology Satellite 3, or ATS-3, was a long-lived American experimental geostationary weather and communications satellite, operated by NASA from 1967 to 2001. It was at one time reputed to be the oldest satellite still in operation ...
satellite was used in 1968 by
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the ''Whole Earth Catalog''. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the auth ...
for his ''
Whole Earth Catalog
The ''Whole Earth Catalog'' (WEC) was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays and articl ...
'', after campaigning since 1966 to have NASA release a then-rumored satellite image of the entire Earth as seen from space. He got inspired during an
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...
trip, seeing a "psychedelic illusion" of the Earth's curvature, convincing him that a picture of the entire planet would change how humans related to it.
He sold and distributed buttons for 25 cents each
that asked: "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?" During this campaign, Brand met
Richard Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more t ...
, who offered to help Brand with his project.
Several of the pins made their way to NASA employees.
The Apollo 17 image, however, released during a surge in
environmental activism
The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement), also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists advo ...
during the 1970s, became a symbol of the
environmental movement
The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement), also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists a ...
, as a depiction of Earth's fragility, vulnerability, and isolation amid the vast expanse of space.
Today, as speculated by NASA archivist Mike Gentry, ''The Blue Marble'' is among the most widely distributed images in history.
Circumstances
![Apollo 17 Blue Marble original orientation (AS17-148-22727)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Apollo_17_Blue_Marble_original_orientation_%28AS17-148-22727%29.jpg)
The photograph's official NASA designation is AS17-148-22727. It is the third of a series of shots which were taken just before and are nearly identical, NASA photograph AS17-148-22725
and AS17-148-22726, the second also having been used as a full-Earth image.
The widely published versions are cropped and chromatically adjusted from the original photographs.
According to the photograph description by NASA it was taken at 05:39 a.m. EST,
5 hours 6 minutes after launch of the Apollo 17 mission,
and about 1 hour 54 minutes after the spacecraft left its parking orbit around Earth to begin its trajectory to the
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
. Alternatively, Eric Hartwell has identified it as having been taken slightly earlier at 5 hours 3 minutes, when one crew member states having changed the
f-number
In optics, the f-number of an optical system such as a camera lens is the ratio of the system's focal length to the diameter of the entrance pupil ("clear aperture").Smith, Warren ''Modern Optical Engineering'', 4th Ed., 2007 McGraw-Hill ...
, presumably between AS17-148-22725, the first of the series of photos, and the following less exposed images like the Blue Marble.
At that time Africa was in noon
daylight and with the December
solstice
A solstice is an event that occurs when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21. In many countr ...
approaching, Antarctica was also illuminated.
The photograph is at times oriented with Earth's south pointing up,
relative to the capsule.
In Eric Hartwell's analysis, Earth's north is pointing up from the seat which he has identified as the vantage point.
Cyclone Sixteen (16B) can be seen in the upper right of the image. This storm had brought flooding and high winds to the Indian state of
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...
on December 5, two days before the photograph was taken.
The photographer used a 70-millimeter
Hasselblad
Victor Hasselblad AB is a Swedish manufacturer of medium format cameras, photographic equipment and image scanners based in Gothenburg, Sweden. The company originally became known for its classic analog medium-format cameras that used a waist- ...
camera with an 80-millimeter
Zeiss Zeiss or Zeiß may refer to:
People
*Carl Zeiss (1816–1888), German optician and entrepreneur
*Emil Zeiß (1833–1910), German Protestant minister and painter
Companies
*Carl Zeiss AG, German manufacturer of optics, industrial measurem ...
lens.
NASA generally
credits images to the whole crew of a mission. All crew members,
Gene Cernan
Eugene Andrew Cernan (; March 14, 1934 – January 16, 2017) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, electrical engineer, aeronautical engineer, and fighter pilot. During the Apollo 17 mission, Cernan became the eleventh human being to ...
,
Ronald Evans and
Harrison Schmitt
Harrison Hagan Schmitt (born July 3, 1935) is an American geologist, retired NASA astronaut, university professor, former U.S. senator from New Mexico, and the most recent living person—and only person without a background in military aviation ...
, took photographs during the mission with the onboard Hasselblad. They have largely avoided definitively answering the question of the photographer's identity by each member claiming to have taken it.
However, interviews
and evidence examined by Eric Hartwell after the mission suggest that Schmitt was the photographer.
Apollo 17 was the last crewed lunar mission. No human since has been far enough from Earth to photograph a whole-Earth image
such as ''The Blue Marble'', but whole-Earth images have been taken by many uncrewed spacecraft missions.
Subsequent ''Blue Marble'' images
Subsequent similar images of Earth (including composites at much higher resolution) have also been termed ''Blue Marble'' images, and the phrase "blue marble" (as well as the picture itself) is frequently used, as in the Earth flag by environmental activist organizations or companies attempting to promote an environmentally conscious image. There has also been a children's
television program
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, e ...
called ''
Big Blue Marble
''Big Blue Marble'' is a half-hour children's television program that was aired from 1974 to 1983 in syndication including on PBS television stations.
Overview
Distinctive content included stories about children around the world and a pen-pal ...
''. Poet-diplomat
Abhay Kumar
Abhay Kumar en Name Abhay K.
En or EN may refer to:
Businesses
* Bouygues (stock symbol EN)
* Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway (reporting mark EN, but now known as Southern Railway of Vancouver Island)
* Euronews, a news television and internet channel
Language and writing
* ...
(born 1980) is an Indian poet-diplomat and currently serves as the Deputy Director General of Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR), New Delhi. He served as India's 21st Ambassador to Madagascar and Comoros ...
penned an
Earth anthem inspired by the Blue Marble which contains "all the peoples and the nations of the world, one for all, all for one, united we unfurl the blue marble flag".
Imaging series 2001–2004
In 2002, NASA released an extensive set of satellite-captured imagery, including prepared images suitable for direct human viewing, as well as complete sets suitable for use in preparing further works. At the time, 1 km/pixel was the most detailed imagery available for free, and permitted for reuse without a need for extensive preparatory work to eliminate cloud cover and conceal missing data, or to parse specialized data formats. The data also included a similarly manually assembled cloud-cover and night-lights image sets, at lower resolutions.
A subsequent release was made in 2005, named ''Blue Marble Next Generation''. This series of
digital image mosaic
A digital image is an image composed of picture elements, also known as ''pixels'', each with ''finite'', '' discrete quantities'' of numeric representation for its intensity or gray level that is an output from its two-dimensional functions f ...
s was produced with the aid of automated image-sifting upon images from
NASA's Earth Observatory, which enabled the inclusion of a complete, cloud-free globe for each month from January to December 2004, at even higher resolution (500 m/pixel).
The original release of a single-image set covering the entire globe could not reflect the extent of seasonal snow-and-vegetative cover across both hemispheres, but this newer release closely modeled the changes of the seasons.
A number of interactive viewers for these data have also been released, among them a
music visualization
Music visualization or music visualisation, a feature found in electronic music visualizers and media player software, generates animated imagery based on a piece of music. The imagery is usually generated and rendered in real time and in a way ...
for the
PlayStation 3
The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...
that is based on the texture data.
''Blue Marble 2012''
![North_America_from_low_orbiting_satellite_Suomi_NPP](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/North_America_from_low_orbiting_satellite_Suomi_NPP.jpg)
On January 25, 2012,
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
released a composite image of the
Western Hemisphere
The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the term We ...
of Earth titled ''Blue Marble 2012''.
Robert Simmon
Robert Simmon is a Senior Data Visualization Engineer at Planet Labs, a commercial Earth observation company in San Francisco. Prior to moving in 2014, he was employed as a Senior Program Analyst at Goddard Space Flight Center where he was affiliat ...
is most notable for his visualization of the Western Hemisphere. The picture logged over 3.1 million views on the
Flickr
Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...
image hosting website within the first week of release.
On February 2, 2012, NASA released a companion to this new ''Blue Marble'', showing a composite image of the
Eastern Hemisphere
The Eastern Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth which is east of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and west of the antimeridian (which crosses the Pacific Ocean and relatively little land from pole to pol ...
from data obtained on January 23, 2012.
[
The picture is composed of data obtained by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on board the ]Suomi NPP
The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP), previously known as the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) and NPP-Bridge, is a weather satellite operated by the United States ...
satellite on January 4, 2012. The data was obtained from six orbits of the Earth by the Suomi NPP over an eight-hour period.[ The image was created using a ]near-sided perspective projection
In cartography, map projection is the term used to describe a broad set of Transformation (function) , transformations employed to represent the two-dimensional curved Surface (mathematics), surface of a globe on a Plane (mathematics), plane. In ...
with the viewing point placed 2100 km (1300 miles) above 20° North by 100° West. This projection results in a very wide-angle presentation such as one might get with a fish-eye lens, and it does not include the whole hemisphere.
''Black Marble 2012''
On December 5, 2012, NASA released a nighttime view of Earth called ''Black Marble'' during an annual meeting of Earth scientists held by the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The images display all the human and natural matter that glows and can be detected from space. The data was acquired by the Suomi NPP
The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP), previously known as the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) and NPP-Bridge, is a weather satellite operated by the United States ...
satellite in April and October 2012 and then mapped over existing ''Blue Marble'' imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet. The Suomi NPP satellite completed 312 orbits and gathered 2.5 terabyte
The byte is a units of information, unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character (computing), character of text in a computer and for this ...
s of data to get a clear shot of every parcel of the Earth's land surface. Named for satellite meteorology pioneer Verner Suomi
Verner may refer to:
* Verner (name), a given name and a surname (including a list of people with the name)
* Verner, Ontario, a town in Canada
* Verner's law, historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language
* Verner Motor, a Czech aircraft ...
, the satellite flies over any given point on Earth's surface twice each day and flies above the surface in a polar orbit.
The nighttime views were obtained with the new satellite's "day-night band" of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared, and uses filtering techniques to observe dim signals such as city lights, gas flares, auroras, wildfires, and reflected moonlight. Auroras, fires, and other stray light have been removed in the case of the ''Black Marble'' images to emphasize the city lights. The images have been used to study the spatial distribution of economic activity, to select sites for astronomical observatories, and to monitor human activities around protected areas.
DSCOVR
On July 21, 2015, NASA released a new ''Blue Marble'' photograph taken by a U.S. Deep Space Climate Observatory
Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR; formerly known as Triana, unofficially known as GoreSat) is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) space weather, space climate, and Earth observation satellite. It was launched by Space ...
(DSCOVR), a solar weather and Earth observation satellite
An Earth observation satellite or Earth remote sensing satellite is a satellite used or designed for Earth observation (EO) from orbit, including spy satellites and similar ones intended for non-military uses such as environmental monitoring, me ...
that was launched in February 2015 and will provide a near-continuous view of the entire sunlit-side of the Earth. The image was taken on July 6, 2015. The photograph, of the Western Hemisphere
The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the term We ...
, is centered over Central America. The Western United States, Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
and the Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
are visible, but much of South America is hidden beneath cloud cover. Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...
can be seen at the upper edge of the image.
The EPIC science team plans to upload 13 new color images per day on their website. The color balance has been adjusted to approximate an image that could be seen with the average human eye. In addition to images, scientific information will be uploaded as it becomes available after in-flight calibration is complete. The science information will be ozone and aerosol amounts, cloud reflectivity, cloud height, and vegetation information. The EPIC instrument views the Earth from sunrise in the west to sunset in the east 12 to 13 times per day as the Earth rotates at 15 degrees of longitude per hour. Clearly visible are storms forming over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, major slowly moving "cloud rivers", dust aerosol plumes from Africa, the sun's reflection in the oceans, ship exhaust tracks in the clouds, rivers and lakes, and the variegated land surface patterns especially in the African deserts. The spatial resolution of the color images is about 10 km (6 miles), and the resolution of the science products will be about 20 km (10 miles). Once every three months, lunar images are obtained that are the same as those viewed from Earth during our full Moon. On occasion, the other side of the Moon will appear in the Earth images as the Moon crosses in front of the Earth.
Cultural reception
The picture has been identified as one of the most widely publicised and influential images since its release, particularly in the advocacy for environmental protection.
Its reflection, and of images from space in general, has been in parts critically analyzed as distracting from human geographic issues and from being a technological product produced by a dominant spacefaring country, which developed the image and its overview effect
The overview effect is a cognitive shift reported by some astronauts while viewing the Earth from space. Researchers have characterized the effect as "a state of awe with self-transcendent qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visu ...
as a boundless worldview instead of as an image inviting an intricate and critical overview.
See also
* DODGE
Dodge is an American brand of automobiles and a division of Stellantis, based in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Dodge vehicles have historically included performance cars, and for much of its existence Dodge was Chrysler's mid-priced brand above P ...
, satellite which took the first color picture of the complete Earth disk
* Earth phases from the Moon
* ''Earthrise
''Earthrise'' is a photograph of Earth and some of the Moon's surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. Nature photographer Galen Rowell described it as "the most infl ...
'', another widely reproduced picture of the Earth, taken in 1968 by Bill Anders
William Alison Anders (born 17 October 1933) is a retired United States Air Force (USAF) major general, former electrical engineer, nuclear engineer, NASA astronaut, and businessman. In December 1968, he was a member of the crew of Apollo 8, ...
aboard Apollo 8
Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968) was the first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times without landing, and then departed safely back to Earth. These ...
* First images of Earth from space
This is a timeline of first images of Earth from space. The initial photographs and digital images of planet Earth taken from outer space were preceded by aerial photography and continue in the form of satellite imagery.
For the purpose of this ...
* Himawari 8
is a Japanese weather satellite, the 8th of the Himawari geostationary weather satellites operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency. The spacecraft was constructed by Mitsubishi Electric with assistance from Boeing, and is the first of two ...
and 9, geostationary satellites that produce an image of the Earth's full face every 10 minutes in the daytime
* ''Pale Blue Dot
''Pale Blue Dot'' is a photograph of planet Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the ''Voyager 1'' space probe from a record distance of about kilometers ( miles, 40.5 AU), as part of that day's ''Family Portrait'' series of images of the ...
'', a 1990 image of the Earth taken by ''Voyager 1
''Voyager 1'' is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. Launched 16 days after its twin ''Voyager 2'', ''Voya ...
''
* '' Pale Orange Dot'', a NASA digital model showing a possible early Earth
The early Earth is loosely defined as Earth in its first one billion years, or gigayear (Ga, 109y). The “early Earth” encompasses approximately the first gigayear in the evolution of our planet, from its initial formation in the young Solar Sy ...
* , author who lobbied NASA in 1966 to release a satellite photograph of the entire Earth because he thought it would be a powerful symbol
* The Day the Earth Smiled
''The Day the Earth Smiled'' is a composite photograph taken by the NASA spacecraft '' Cassini'' on July 19, 2013. During an eclipse of the Sun, the spacecraft turned to image Saturn and most of its visible ring system, as well as Earth and ...
* Space selfie
* ''Whole Earth Catalog
The ''Whole Earth Catalog'' (WEC) was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays and articl ...
'', an eclectic catalog compiled by Brand which was inspired in part by photographs of the Earth as a globe
Explanatory notes
References
External links
* NAS
history
of ''Blue Marble'' image releases
1972 photograph
Apollo Image Atlas
– Photos from magazine NN of the 70 mm Hasselblad
Victor Hasselblad AB is a Swedish manufacturer of medium format cameras, photographic equipment and image scanners based in Gothenburg, Sweden. The company originally became known for its classic analog medium-format cameras that used a waist- ...
camera used on Apollo 17 (includes the ''Blue Marble'' photo and similar photographs)
Apollo 17 in Real-time
– The moment the ''Blue Marble'' photo was taken in the context of the rest of the Apollo 17 mission
A short list of places in which the image has been used
21st century NASA composite images
''Blue Marble''
(2002)
*
''Blue Marble'' Mapserver
– Web interface for viewing small sections of the above
''Blue Marble'': Next Generation
(2005; one picture per month)
*
''Blue Marble'' Navigator
– Web interface for viewing local sections of the above, incl. links to other such interfaces, download sites, etc.
*
''Wired'': "New Satellite Takes Spectacular High-Res Image of Earth"
with link to 2012 Composite in Super High Resolution
"Earth at Night: It's the end of the night as you know it; you'll see fine."
– NASA Earth Observatory site with various links around the 2012 and 2017 ''Black Marble'' images
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blue Marble, The
1970s photographs
1972 works
1972 in art
Apollo program
Apollo 17
Color photographs
Gene Cernan
Harrison Schmitt
Photographs of Earth from outer space
Ronald Evans (astronaut)