Blue Marble
The Blue Marble is a photograph of Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by one of the astronauts aboard the Apollo 17 spacecraft on its way to the Moon. Viewed from around 29,400 kilometers (18,300 mi; 15,900 nmi) from Earth's surface, a cropped, rotated, and processed version has become one of the most reproduced images in history.
In the original NASA image, named AS17-148-22727 and centered at about 26°19′49″S 37°25′13″E with the South Pole facing upwards, The Blue Marble shows Earth from the Mediterranean Sea to Antarctica. This was the first time the Apollo trajectory and seasonal timing made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap, despite the Southern Hemisphere being heavily covered in clouds. In addition to the Arabian Peninsula and Madagascar, almost the entire coastline of Africa and most of the Indian Ocean are clearly visible, a cyclone in the Indian Ocean is also visible, the South Asian mainland and Australia are on the eastern limb, and the eastern part of South America lies on the western limb.
NASA has also applied the name to a 2012 series of images which cover the entire globe at relatively high resolution. These were created after a search of satellite pictures taken over time found as many cloudless photographs as possible for use in the final images. NASA has verified that the 2012 "blue marble" images are composites, made from multiple images taken from low Earth orbit, an altitude whose narrow field of view does not allow of photographing the entire planet at once. Likewise, these images do not fit together properly and, because of lighting, weather and cloud interference, it is impossible to collect cohesive or fully clear images of the entire Earth simultaneously.
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