The Blue Marble, taken byHarrison Schmitt of theApollo 17 crew in 1972. The original photograph was taken with theSouth Pole facing the top; however, this version is the most widely distributed.
The Blue Marble is a photograph ofEarth taken on December 7, 1972, byHarrison Schmitt aboard theApollo 17 spacecraft on its way to theMoon.[1] Viewed from around 29,400 km (18,300 mi) from Earth's surface,[2] a cropped and rotated version has become one of the most reproduced images in history.[3][4]
NASA 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 throughsatellite pictures taken over time in order to find as many cloudless photographs as possible to use in the final images. NASA has verified that the 2012 "blue marble" images are composites, made from multiple images taken in low Earth orbit. 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 of the entire Earth simultaneously.[5]
The photograph, taken on December 7, 1972,[6] is one of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence.[4] The astronauts had the Earth's South Pole facing upwards and the Sun above them (in spatial navigation terms, to theirzenith)[7] when they took the image. To theastronauts, the Earth had the appearance and size of a glassmarble.[vague]
Before theBlue Marble a picture of the fully illuminated Earth by theATS-3 satellite was used in 1968 byStewart Brand for hisWhole Earth Catalog, 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 anLSD 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.[10][11] He sold and distributed buttons for 25 cents each[12] that asked: "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?"[13] During this campaign, Brand metBuckminster Fuller, who offered to help Brand with his project.[14] Several of the pins made their way to NASA employees.[11]
The Apollo 17 image, however, released during a surge inenvironmental activism during the 1970s, became a symbol of theenvironmental movement, as a depiction of Earth's fragility, vulnerability, and isolation amid the vast expanse of space.[3]
Today, as speculated by NASA archivist Mike Gentry,The Blue Marble is among the most widely distributed images in history.[4]
Apollo 17 image AS17-148-22727, commonly referred to as "The Blue Marble"
The photograph's official NASA designation is AS17-148-22727.[15] It is the third of a series of shots which were taken just before and are nearly identical, NASA photograph AS17-148-22725[16] and AS17-148-22726, the second also having been used as a full-Earth image.[17] The widely published versions arecropped and chromatically adjusted from the original photographs.[18][19]
According to the photograph description by NASA it was taken at 05:39 a.m EST (10:39 UTC),[9] 5 hours 6 minutes after launch of the Apollo 17 mission,[20] and about 1 hour 54 minutes after the spacecraft left its parking orbit around Earth to begin its trajectory to theMoon.[21] Alternatively, Eric Hartwell has identified it as having been taken slightly earlier at 5 hours 3 minutes, when one crew member states having changed thef-number, presumably between AS17-148-22725, the first of the series of photos, and the following less exposed images like the Blue Marble.[4] At that time, Africa was in noon[9] daylight and with the Decembersolstice approaching, Antarctica was also illuminated.
The picture shows many weather systems,[23] featuring aShapyro–Keyser cyclone near to the center of the image.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 ofTamil Nadu on December 5, two days before the photograph was taken.[24][25] This image has also been used to validate state-of-the-artatmospheric reanalysis fifty years after it was taken.[26]
The photographer used a 70-millimeterHasselblad camera with an 80-millimeterZeiss lens.[27][28] NASA generally credits images to the whole crew of a mission.[4] All crew members,Gene Cernan,Ronald Evans andHarrison Schmitt, 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.[29] However, interviews[7] and evidence examined by Eric Hartwell after the mission suggest that Schmitt was the photographer.[4]
Apollo 17 was the last crewed lunar mission. No human since has been far enough from Earth to photograph a whole-Earth image[3] such asThe Blue Marble, but whole-Earth images have been taken by many uncrewed spacecraft missions.[30]
Subsequent similar images of Earth (including composites at much higher resolution) have also been termedBlue 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'stelevision program calledBig Blue Marble. Poet-diplomatAbhay Kumar penned anEarth 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".[31][better source needed]
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.[32] At the time, 1 km/pixel was the most detailed imagery available for free, and permitted for reuse[33] 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, namedBlue Marble Next Generation.[34] This series ofdigital image mosaics was produced with the aid of automated image-sifting upon images fromNASA'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).[35] 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 amusic visualization for thePlayStation 3 that is based on the texture data.[35][36]
On January 25, 2012,NASA released a composite image of theWestern Hemisphere of Earth titledBlue Marble 2012.Robert Simmon is most notable for his visualization of the Western Hemisphere. The picture logged over 3.1 million views on theFlickr image hosting website within the first week of release.[37] On February 2, 2012, NASA released a companion to this newBlue Marble, showing a composite image of theEastern Hemisphere from data obtained on January 23, 2012.[38]
The picture is composed of data obtained by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on board theSuomi NPP satellite on January 4, 2012.[38][39] The data was obtained from six orbits of the Earth by the Suomi NPP over an eight-hour period.[38] The image was created using anear-sided perspective projection with the viewing point placed 2,100 km (1,300 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 – North and South America at night,[40]Hurricane Sandy can be seen off the coast of Florida.
On December 5, 2012, NASA released a nighttime view of Earth calledBlack Marble[40] during an annual meeting of Earth scientists held by the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.[41] The images display all the human and natural matter that glows and can be detected from space.[42] The data was acquired by theSuomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012 and then mapped over existingBlue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet.[43] The Suomi NPP satellite completed 312 orbits and gathered 2.5terabytes of data to get a clear shot of every parcel of the Earth's land surface. Named for satellite meteorology pioneerVerner Suomi, the satellite flies over any given point on Earth's surface twice each day and flies 512 miles (824 km) above the surface in a polar orbit.[44]
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 theBlack Marble images to emphasize the city lights.[43] 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.[43]
A color-corrected image of the Earth taken by theDSCOVR satellite on December 7, 2022, exactly 50 years after the originalBlue Marble image
On July 21, 2015, NASA released a newBlue Marble photograph taken by a U.S.Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), a solar weather andEarth observation satellite that was launched in February 2015 and provided a near-continuous view of the entire sunlit-side of the Earth. The image was taken on July 6, 2015.[45] The photograph, of theWestern Hemisphere, is centered over Central America. The Western United States,Mexico and theCaribbean are visible, but much of South America is hidden beneath cloud cover.Greenland 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 a 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.
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.[3][4][46]
The Blue Marble, and other images from space, have 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 itsoverview effect as a boundless worldview instead of as an image inviting an intricate andcritical overview.[47][48][49]
Stewart Brand § NASA images of Earth, author who lobbied NASA in 1966 to release a satellite photograph of the entire Earth because he thought it would be a powerful symbol
^"Apollo 17 Day 1: Transposition, Docking and Extraction". NASA. 2022. RetrievedOctober 1, 2023.By measurement of the size of Earth's image in these photographs (29mm), they were taken at a distance of about 29,400 kilometres (15,900 nautical miles).
^"Apollo 17 (AS-512)". National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution. Archived fromthe original on January 16, 2021. RetrievedJanuary 30, 2018.
