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The Goddard Space Flight Center has a Flickr account showcasing a series of images of our own home planet. Called “Blue Marble,” these spectacular images are the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations in 2001 of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. Your tax dollars at work, these images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public. This record includes preview images and links to full resolution versions up to 21,600 pixels across.
Compare these new images to the original “Blue Marble” photograph, below, taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1968.
These are just amazing. They’re so perfect they almost don’t look real.
This is a deliciously enviable planet. As an extra-terrestrial, I am jealous of those watery bipeds. If I lived here, I would do more to ensure that it remains this nice.
Earth is really a unique and the most beautiful planet in the universe.It is clear from this picture that earth really a true heaven that we can imagine.
Beautiful. These new images give us a better idea what the Earth REALLY looked like to the Apollo astronauts as they headed to and from the Moon 40 years ago.
When I was a kid, artists’ impressions of the earth from space were mostly green land dark, almost black sea and with almost no clouds, Apollo 8 changed that forever.
Even with the fuzzy and grainy Earth video from lunar orbit, I remember looking at the moon with my 2″ Sears scope, knowing men were right then orbiting the moon.
Glad at least see Nancy respond to spam complaints on her stories. When will the others address this person:
I’ve removed all of Joyce’s posts and deleted the account. SPAM posts are going to happen Jon, and it’s hard to delete them when we’re asleep.
My humble apologies to Fraiser Cain. I was not my intention to impugn UT staffers and will be more tolerant of this time-delay matter in the future. Thank you, Fraiser, for your commendable response in this matter! 🙂
One thing I thought would have been literally out of this world to see… the experience the lunar astronauts had of watching both the Moon and Earth getting larger and larger during their trip.