Our Blue Marble
Certainly, one of the most famous photos of our Earth was taken in 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew from 45,000 kilometers away.
This week the US space agency NASA released a brand-new Blue Marble photo which was taken on July 6 from about 1.6 million kilometers away by the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR).
DSCOVR is a satellite that helps scientists see possible dangers to our weather here on Earth, a major solar storm for example. But it is also an excellent photographer that will take photos of the full earth every day.
Previously, the photos you have seen of the full Earth, apart from the Apollo 17 photo, have been composites – many different photos stitched together to make one. This is a slow, difficult process, but DSCOVR is going to make things much easier.