APOD: Blue Marble Earth (2022 Feb 06)

[APOD Robot]

Blue Marble Earth

Explanation: Welcome to planet Earth, the third planet from a star named the Sun. The Earth is shaped like a sphere and composed mostly of rock. Over 70 percent of the Earth's surface is water. The planet has a relatively thin atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen and oxygen. The featured picture of Earth, dubbed The Blue Marble, was taken from Apollo 17 in 1972 and features Africa and Antarctica. It is thought to be one of the most widely distributed photographs of any kind. Earth has a single large Moon that is about 1/4 of its diameter and, from the planet's surface, is seen to have almost exactly the same angular size as the Sun. With its abundance of liquid water, Earth supports a large variety of life forms, including potentially intelligent species such as dolphins and humans. Please enjoy your stay on planet Earth.

<< Previous APOD

This Day in APOD

Next APOD >>

[AVAO]

A "current" view of today's water planet can be found at
https://earth.google.com/web/@-18.81240 ... y,0h,0t,0r
The cloud picture is almost live.

A real view (Aug 7, 2017) from NASA can be found at
https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagega ... _1925.html

[Astronymus]

Pretty sure "humans" are not counted among the intelligent lifeforms.

[DL MARTIN]

There's no free lunch.

[XgeoX]

Pretty sure "humans" are not counted among the intelligent lifeforms.

More scurrilous insults from dolphin posters!
I will consume you in my free dolphin tuna!

Eric

[XgeoX]

Wow,
Just look at that gorgeous green belt of vegetaion and how Madagascar (an island only well known because of it being a province in Risk) is covered with it not to mention the gorgeous white water clouds.
You know I get wanting to explore Mars in person for a year or two (I would todo it!) but I don’t get wanting to finish your life out on that cold, drier than we can imagine and bereft of blue and green planet drinking and eating waste derived food. I’d rather let probes do it.

[Roger]

A couple of the interesting things that this image shows rather subtly are a narrrow, bright limb band at the left edge of the Earth, which is absent on the right side because the right side is a terminator, not a limb; and a specular reflection from the ocean next to Africa, displaced slightly to the left of center because of the relative positions of the Sun and the photographer. Bright limb bands are also seen (in images and also visually) with Venus and Mars. Specular reflections are detected from the lakes of Titan at wavelengths longer than we can see (long enough to penetrate Titan's atmosphere).

[orin stepanek]

bluemarble_apollo17_3000.jpg

happy-kitten-kittens-5890512-1600-12001-1024x768.jpg

Beautiful marble Earth; Best place in the Solar System: Glad I live
here! Kitty think so too!

[Fred the Cat]

Perhaps Webb will provide evidence about how common water is in other solar systems.

[JohnD]

" potentially intelligent species such as dolphins and humans", who are mostly harmless.

[johnnydeep]

Pretty sure "humans" are not counted among the intelligent lifeforms.

Which is why there's no comma after 'dolphins'!

...including potentially intelligent species such as dolphins and humans.

That is, both humans and dolphins are counted as among the merely potentially intelligent.

[XgeoX]

happy-kitten-kittens-5890512-1600-12001-1024x768.jpg
Beautiful marble Earth; Best place in the Solar System: Glad I live
here! Kitty think so too!

Another reason to hang out on Earth until of course the dawn of star kitty…





Eric