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.greenpolicy360.net/w/Blue_Marble_Collection

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And 1968 Earthrise... from the Moon...

"The Earthrise photograph of 1968 [on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24th] and the 'Blue marble' photograph of [December] 1972 between them frame the Apollo Moon programme. They also represent the beginning and the summit of whole Earth awareness. But while the Earthrise showed the Earth in space, 'Blue marble' showed the Earth alone. Filling the frame, centered on Africa (mankind's place of origin), and looking both alone and alive, its message was not 'space' but 'home'. It was a record of a particular historical moment: mankind's last trip (to date) beyond Earth's orbit..."

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Blue-Thoughts as we spin thru space...

Blue Marble...

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

Earthrise...

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/home/earthrise.html