NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Expedition 37 flight engineer, enjoys the view of Earth from the windows in the Cupola of the International Space Station. A blue and white part of Earth is visible through the windows. NASA
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Earth rotating at night. NASA
Close your eyes and picture what the Earth looks like.
You’re probably picturing a circle, mostly blue thanks to the ocean, with swirls of clouds and the occasional green and brown land mass. The entire sphere is floating in a mass of impossible black. You’re picturing Earth in a way that you’ve never actually seen with your own two eyes. Maybe you’re getting the sketch from this famous shot, below, known as the blue marble image. Astronauts aboard the Apollo 17 space mission snapped the picture on December 7th, 1972. Countless other images of our home planet have been taken, which have forever shaped our imagination of it. Still, only a handful of humans have seen it with naked eyes.
Almost without exception, those humans (mostly astronauts), say the experience of seeing the Earth from outer space profoundly changes who they are as a person. It makes the Earth feel more precious, they say, our human grievances seem pettier, and the environmental damages we are causing to the planet, graver. Today is World Environment Day, or what the United Nation’s calls the “people’s day” for doing something to take care of the Earth. But in order for us to take care of the Earth, we first have to remember why the Earth matters. And what better way to do so than a gallery of stunning images of the Earth from the outside combined with words that encapsulate the perspective of those who have had the fortune to see the planet first hand from this unique perspective. Enjoy.
The famous “blue marble” photo of the Earth. The Apollo 17 crew took this image en route to the moon. NASA
On February 12, 1984 astronaut Bruce McCandless used a nitrogen jet propelled backpack to venture further away from his space ship than any astronaut had before. He took this photo in the process. NASA
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recently captured a unique view of Earth from the spacecraft’s vantage point in orbit around the moon. NASA
Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, 1968. That evening, the astronauts—Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders—held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. NASA
This composite image derived from MODIS instrument land surface and cloud cover products provide the clearest view year of the patterns of human settlement across the planet. This is a view of the Americas at night. NASA
Photo of the India-Pakistan Border at night taken by a member of the Expedition 45 crew on the International Space Station. NASAAn image of Earth and the moon, acquired on October 3, 2007, by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA
A picture of a natural phytoplankton bloom in the North Atlantic taken by NASA’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite. NASA
An image of the moon crossing in front of the full sunlit disk of Earth caught by NASA’s Earth Polycromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory. NASA
Image of air pollution recorded over China in 2014 recorded by NASA’s Terra satellite. NASA
