Why is the blue marble so significant?

Enter “Blue Marble”: It was the first full photo of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the American crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft. The original Blue Marble is thought by many to be the most-reproduced image of all time.

How does NASA take pictures of the Earth?

Earth. Satellites in orbit regularly photograph the Earth’s surface. NASA’s Landsat series of satellites have consistently orbited and captured images of the Earth since the program launched in 1972.

Is the blue marble a composite?

Today the space agency unveiled what it’s calling the “most amazing high definition image of Earth — Blue Marble 2012.” This one was taken “from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite — Suomi NPP,” NASA says, and is a “composite image [that] uses a number of swaths of the …

When was the Blue Marble photo taken?

Dec. 7, 1972
This classic photograph of the Earth was taken on Dec. 7, 1972, by the crew of Apollo 17. The original caption is reprinted below: View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon.

What is blue marble stone?

Blue marble is a natural stone capable of visually connecting us with the sky and the sea. Sodalite Blue, composed of lazulite, calcite, and pyrite, creates a velvety cobalt sea furrowed by golden waves. Macaubas Blue features a crystalline sky-blue background with white, and orange striations.

Are NASA Earth images real?

Nasa has released the first picture of the Earth that it has taken in 43 years. All of the pictures since then have been produced by stitching together different pictures into a full image of the globe. The new picture is a composite, of three separate images, but each of those images showed the whole planet.

Does NASA have photos of Earth?

Over the past 60 years, astronauts have shot more than 1.5 million photographs of Earth from the International Space Station and other spacecraft. Most have been catalogued by the Earth Science and Remote Sensing (ESRS) unit at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Is blue marble stone real?

What file types are available for Blue Marble images?

Full-resolution, subsetted, and reduced-resolution files are available as JPEG, PNG, and GeoTIFF via the Blue Marble Next Generation collection on NASA’s Visible Earth and through the NASA Earth Observations (NEO) archive. Blue Marble: Next Generation was produced by Reto Stöckli, NASA Earth Observatory (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center).

What is Blue Marble Earth imagery?

This new Earth imagery enhances the Blue Marble legacy by providing a detailed look at an entire year in the life of our planet. In sharing these Blue Marble images, NASA hopes the public will join with the agency in its continuing exploration of our world from the unique perspective of space.

What is the spatial resolution of Blue Marble?

The original Blue Marble was a composite of four months of MODIS observations with a spatial resolution (level of detail) of 1 square kilometer per pixel. Blue Marble: Next Generation offers a year’s worth of monthly composites at a spatial resolution of 500 meters.

What is earth’s blue dot shape called?

Earth, described by scientist Carl Sagan as a “Pale Blue Dot,” as seen by Voyager 1 from a distance of more than 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers). This image inspired the title of Sagan’s 1994 book, “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.”.