File:Blue Marble photo - Apollo 17.jpg

NASA Image AS17-148-22727

... the first photograph taken of the whole round Earth and the only one ever snapped by a human being

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo17/html/as17-148-22727.html -- Dec 7, 1972

"You have to literally just pinch yourself and ask yourself the question, silently: Do you know where you are at this point in time and space, and in reality and in existence, when you can look out the window and you're looking at the most beautiful star in the heavens -- the most beautiful because it's the one we understand and we know, it's home, it's people, family, love, life -- and besides that it is beautiful. You can see from pole to pole and across oceans and continents and you can watch it turn and there's no strings holding it up, and it's moving in a blackness that is almost beyond conception."

○ ○ ○ ○

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/the-blue-marble-shot-our-first-complete-photograph-of-earth/237167/

http://io9.com/the-real-story-of-apollo-17-and-why-we-never-went-ba-1670503448

https://www.facebook.com/pages/BEAUTIFUL-PLANET-EARTH/198320350202343 Earth360