Real Earth

That image’s quite old actually. The old FLCE Earth had a blueish atmosphere, although it wasn’t quite as saturated as this.

You must know that this is just a render, however. The actual atmosphere isn’t THAT blue I believe.

EDIT: http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/4/screen266.jpg

The land is taken from satellite images, but the atmosphere was added later and it pretty clearly was an afterthought.

http://www.photo-de-vacance.com/METEO/adsl/TheBlueMarbleFromApollo17.jpg

That’s an actual picture of the Earth taken from space and I don’t see such a bright blue atmosphere.

It’s from an different angle, with the sun in the back
the atmosphere is brighter from other angles, you see the oceans there not the atmosphere

If you need current pictures of the earth you can choose from which sattelite: http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/custom.html

Unfortunate i didnt found yet a picture with athmosphere but i guess the colour depends on the angle of view. I personally tend to believe its bright blue and not as dark as shown in the first post. I found out the image is from 2006?!

Last time I looked at Earth from a position that I could see all of it…

… I was only there in spirit…!!

ROFL!

I don’t know about you guys, but I have known for 42 years the earth looked like this from space…

besides, the cloudmap is just way too clear.

and this is just a render with textures like this one
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/earthcloud.php
(added 2004-11-04 15:24)
(look at the cloud formation over Canada and look on the black cloudmap in the left upper corner - similarities? - yeh)

and for the surface i think they used one of the Jestr Earth maps
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/earth.php
(those with layers)

its not a photo, that everybody knows (i hope)
but the article also said

The Blue Marble series was pieced together from thousands of images taken over many months by the satellite’s remote-sensing device Modis, of every square kilometre of the Earth’s surface.

Light blue is fine IMO. That dark blue looks out of place.

Ahhh, that is what your getting at.

Well I recall a discussion on this once, longer ago than I care to admit. I can boil it down in to two issues for you.

1) The earths atmosphere is “Blue” due to Rayleigh scattering. So obviously you can’t paint a consistent hue of blue from edge to edge of a approx round planet and have it look “Real.” It should be more like outdoors in a cloudless blue sky, lighter shade at horizon, (Edges) Darker overhead (Center).

2) Think a moment about the filters placed in front of the cameras in all cases to reduce the light intensity of that local star (Sun), to avoid burning out camera’s, film, or astronauts retina’s. The different shades and colors of these will always make comparing photos open to interpretation.

Soooo, Just use your creative minds to find the hue you like, and if it is questioned, blame it on the cockpit window tint… XD

BTW, Who has not noticed the sky is a darker blue on a cloudless clear, cold winter day, than a clear and sunny hot summer day?