More perspective

This evokes for me the same feeling Carl Sagan was trying to awaken, from further out: a sense of ourselves as voyagers on Starship Earth, a single species hugging a fraction of a dot, with the solar winds in our sails.

 A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. 

Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and the Amazon. Also visible is the earths ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars of our galaxy. Raw data was downloaded from;
The Gateway To Astronaut Photography of Earth "http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/mrf.htm ". Virtualdub was used to create the final movie. You can see more beautiful images of our universe at: http://infinity-imagined.tumblr.com/

As Jerry Coyne comments, "This should give you a 'spiritual' experience." Amen. Pass the plate, NASA.