Earth and Space: Photographs From the Archives of NASA Book Review

The curated collection furnishes images from every decade, excepting the 1950s, since NASA’s funding in 1958, the year after the Earth-orbiting, Soviet Union-launched object Sputnik (“Companion”). It gives the automatic Command Module apogee camera’s 70-millimeter-filmed photograph of Earth from the unmanned Apollo 4 mission test-launching Saturn V on Tuesday, November 9, 1967. It has the iconic “Earthrise” of Tuesday, December 24, 1968, by astronaut William Anders from Apollo 8’s spacecraft 484 miles (778.92 kilometers) above the lunar surface. It includes the first photo taken of Earth in its entirety, the iconic Blue Marble image from the Apollo 17 mission on Thursday, December 7, 1972.

Koichi Wakata’s crescent moon joins as an International Space Station Expedition 28-tweeted photograph. 

The pictorial work keeps to an observation-friendly organization by sequencing photographs along astronomical progressions from the solar system, through the Milky Way galaxy, into deep space. It leaves space shuttle Discovery-photographed, lower and upper atmospheric aerosol gas-caused Asian brown cloud pollution for Jupiter’s Europa and Io, Mercury, Neptune’s Triton, Saturn, and Venus.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory, Herschel Space Observatory, Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, and Wide-held Infrared Survey Explorer make possible photographic journeys inside and outside the galaxy.

Hubble needs 97-minute orbits 353 miles (568.09 kilometers) above Earth at 5-mile-per-second (8.05-kilometer-per-second) speeds for its main 7.9-foot-diameter (2.41-meter-diameter) mirror to realize near-infrared, ultraviolet, visible image-capturing. En route, it operates near-infrared, survey and wide-field cameras, sensors, spectrographs, and spectrometer. 

Earth and Space presents Earth’s neighbors, beginning with the constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus and ending with the galaxy cluster MACS 10717 5.4 billion light years away. It quantifies the mechanics of space with dark energy, as 70 percent of universal mass; dark matter, as 25 percent; and visible matter, as 5 percent. It reveals Cepheid variables for calculating extra-galactic distances; hypernovas for exploding bigger, longer, louder than supernovas; and star bubbles for the Milky Way Project’s citizen scientists. It shows a universe whose cloud complexes, galactic and globular clusters, local groups, molecular clouds, planetary nebulas, and star systems become as familiar as our Earth.

Earth and Space takes readers on culturally enriching, educationally entertaining, geo-historically enthralling journeys. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

iconic "Earthrise" photograph taken by William "Bill" Anders, Apollo 8's lunar module pilot, on Christmas Eve, Tuesday, December 24, 1968, 15:40 GMT (10:40 a.m. Houston [Central Standard Time])
lunar horizon, near eastern limb (as viewed from Earth), about 570 kilometers (350 miles) from Apollo 8 spacecraft; Earth about five degrees above lunar horizon; Earth at distance of about 240,000 miles (386,242 kilometers)
telephoto view from Apollo 8 spacecraft near near 110 degrees east longitude; NASA ID AS8-14-2383: Public Domain, via NASA @ https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a410/AS8-14-2383HR.jpg

Crescent moon rising from the Earth atmosphere"; image of rising crescent moon and cusp of Earth's atmosphere tweeted on February 1, 2014, by Koichi Wakata, JAXA (Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency) astronaut
Visibility of distinct colors: dominant gases and particles in each atmospheric layer act as prisms to filter out certain colors of light.
International Space Station's Expedition 38, November 10, 2013 to March 10, 2014: Public Domain, via NASA @ https://www.nasa.gov/content/crescent-moon-rising-and-earths-atmosphere

the image that mesmerized the world: "The Blue Marble" of Earth, imaged by Apollo 17 crew on Thursday, December 7, 1972
Apollo 17 mission had first Apollo trajectory allowing for imaging the South polar ice cap.: Public Domain, via NASA @ https://www.nasa.gov/content/blue-marble-image-of-the-earth-from-apollo-17

Unmanned Apollo 4 mission captures photogenic Earth as crescent on Thursday, November 9, 1967.
Earth from an altitude of 9,745 nautical miles (18047.74 kilometers; 11214.35), taken by an automatic camera aboard Apollo 4 (Spacecraft 017/Saturn 501): Antarctica appears at the top of crescent, with Africa's northwestern coast visible at bottom.
Apollo 4 still photography; NASA ID AS04-01-410: NASA, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a410/AS4-1-410HR.jpg

"The Blue Marble" on Friday, February 8, 2002: detailed true-color image of the entire Earth; seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile)
Apollo 17's iconic image, taken Thursday, December 7, 1972, continues to inspires updated versions that photogenically convey a wealth of information for NASA scientists.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Image by Reto Stöckli; enhancements by Robert Simmon: Public Domain, via NASA @ https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/images/57723/the-blue-marble

Nataraj, Nirmala. 2015. Earth and Space: Photographs from the Archives of NASA. Preface by Bill Nye. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books LLC.