Portal:Photography/AOTW/41, 2006

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The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth taken on 7 December 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft at a distance of about 45,000 kilometers or about 28,000 miles. It is one of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence. The image is one of the few to show a fully lit Earth, as the astronauts had the Sun behind them when they took the image. To the astronauts, who were 28,000 miles distant, Earth had the appearance of a child's glass marble (hence the name).