A View of Our Home: The other side

Last week I posted this composite image of Earth’s Western Hemisphere, taken by NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite. The image, the most recent of the “Blue Marbles,” is truly stunning. Then last week, as a result of the popularity of the first image, NASA released this one, showing a portion of our Eastern hemisphere.

Click here to view the incredible high-resolution version, once again, it is well worth it.

As I looked at it, it occurred to me that I had seen this image before; it was taken from a similar vantage point as the original “Blue Marble” photograph taken in 1972 by the Apollo 17 astronauts as they traveled toward the moon.

Our home was beautiful back in 1972, and is still as jaw-droppingly awesome today. How can we not feel inspired?

A View of Our Home

Earlier this year, NASA’s NPP ( National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project), took a series of images of the earth, which, when stitched together, produced this absolutely stunning image.

We really do have a beautiful home, don’t we? And for an even more incredible view, click here to view the 8000 x 8000 pixel version, it’s well worth it.

I came across this image at Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog; the place where I get most of the astronomy photos that I post here.  In his post about this image he had this to say,

Apropos of nothing, I’ll note the images making up this seamless mosaic were taken around the same time the Earth was at perihelion, when it was closest to the Sun in its orbit. There is nothing particularly important about that fact, but still… when I see pictures like this I think about how amazing our planet is, and how wonderfully well-adapted we are to it. Evolution is a stochastic process, a semi-random series of bumps and false starts that literally made us who were are today. But that doesn’t change the feeling of comfort I get when I see a picture of Earth, floating in space, sitting in the brightest and warmest sunlight of the year.

Perfectly said, Phil.