NASA’s ‘Blue Marbles’: Pictures of Earth From 1972 to Today

A NASA camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite has returned a breathtaking view of the entire sunlit side of Earth from one million miles away. This colour image of Earth was taken by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope. The image was generated by combining three separate images to create a photographic-quality image. The camera takes a series of 10 images using different narrowband filters -- from ultraviolet to near infrared -- to produce a variety of science products. The red, green and blue channel images are used in these colour images. The image shows North and Central America. The central turquoise areas are shallow seas around the Caribbean islands. This Earth image shows the effects of sunlight scattered by air molecules, giving the image a characteristic bluish tint. The EPIC team has worked to remove this atmospheric effect from subsequent images. EPIC provides a daily series of Earth images allowing for the first time study of daily variations over the entire globe. These images, available 12 to 36 hours after they are acquired are posted to a dedicated web page. The primary objective of DSCOVR, a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force, is to maintain the nation’s real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities, which are critical to the accuracy and lead time of space weather alerts and forecasts from NOAA.

The Apollo 17 crew took this iconic photo of Earth while traveling towards the moon in 1972. It was taken from 28,000 miles away.

NASA captured the data used to create these images of the Western and Eastern Hemispheres in 2001. Many similar images released between 1972 and 2015 are composites of pictures taken at different times.

In 2002, NASA stitched together satellite data to produce a new, more detailed, and more accurately coloured Blue Marble.

This image is part of NASA’s “Blue Marble: Next Generation,” a series of photos of Earth pieced together from satellite data from 2004.

This photo of lights twinkling from space was compiled from satellite data collected in 2012.

NASA produced this more recent “Blue Marble” by integrating satellite data from 2012.