10 Exceptional Images Of Earth From Space

Life on a pale blue dot.

By Josh Hrala

Updated

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Blue Marble
The 'Blue Marble' image of Earth captured in 2012. NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

It’s nice to set aside a day out of the year to remember that, despite all of the imaginary borders we set up to define ourselves—our offices, neighborhoods, cities and, most importantly to many, countries—we’re all spinning through space on the same blue sphere. After all, that’s what will unite us when the aliens inevitably show up on the White House lawn one day. With all that in mind, for this year’s Earth Day, let’s check out some of the best images of our planet from space because there’s nothing more sobering than the realization that all of human history is contained, as Carl Sagan would say, on a pale blue dot.

EPIC Earth
NASA
Earthrise
NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University
Pale Blue Dot
NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Blue Marble
NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring
ISS Flies Over the Mediterranean
ESA/NASA
Scott Kelly's Good Morning Picture
NASA
HD Sky View
NASA
A View of the Great Lakes from the ISS
NASA/Barry Wilmore
False-Color Image of Earth's Plant Growth
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Morning Aurora
NASA
 
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