The Blue Marble

The Blue Marble is a photograph of Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of Apollo 17 from about 29,400 kilometers away, showing the planet from the Mediterranean Sea to Antarctica with the African continent prominent at its center. It became one of the most reproduced images ever made, and served as a widely used symbol of the environmental movement of the 1970s, presenting Earth as small, fragile and isolated in space. The image is credited with helping popularize what is now called the overview effect, the shift in perspective astronauts and viewers describe on seeing the whole planet at once, and it remains, decades later, one of NASA's most requested photographs despite the availability of newer satellite imagery.