Blue Marble Time!

About Blue Marble Time! Android App

***NEWS: see the March 9th 2016 eclipse**

This app displays recent and **real** images of the Earth, on its fully lit side.
Also includes a *Live Wallpaper*, which shows the latest image of the earth close to this time of day.

Instructions:
Swipe horizontally to switch to the previous or next image in time.
Swipe vertically for a full-day jump.

The images are courtesy of NASA and are of public domain. They were taken from the EPIC camera on board the DSCOVR space program. It was launched from Cap Canaveral in Florida on February 2015, and inserted during July 2015 in orbit on the so-called "L1 Lagrange Point", or just " L1". This special location in outer space is about 1 million miles (around 1.5 million km) from Earth, and has this wonderful particularity of being at a fixed point on the line between Earth and the Sun.

This is how the EPIC camera is able to take continuous pictures of the fully lit side of the Earth, or in other words, the Earth as it is seen from the Sun !!

EPIC provides a dozen of images per day, which are shared with Mankind as public domain via their website:
http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov.
This app connects to this same website and pulls images using its API, directly into your favorite device!

Depending on NASA's delivery, the images may be 1 or 2 days old, but the default selected shot is chosen to be close to the present time-of-day.

Regardless of the technical details, the main goal of this app is to use real imagery to provide to everyone the enchantment known as "Overview Effect". A new level of consciousness of the beauty, perfection and preciousness of our only world. It was first experienced by the Apollo 17 astronauts more than 40 years ago when they sent to Houston the first ever full picture of the Earth while on their way to the Moon. This picture is also known as " The Blue Marble".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble#/media/File:The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg