The Earth as a collage of the photographs that exist. Drag the years: before 1858 nothing has been photographed from above and the globe is only the map. Then a balloon over Boston, a kite over San Francisco, a V-2 frame over New Mexico, the first television picture, Apollo's full discs un-projected onto the hemisphere they show, Landsat, and from 2000 the daily archive — until today is a mosaic of pictures taken today, each tile a real photograph with its date. Around it, every active satellite moves at its computed position; scrub back and the ones not yet launched are gone. Click a photograph or a satellite for its facts and its source; keep scrolling and it opens into a page. The diamond brings you home. Or take the ride: from the station's altitude out past the geostationary ring.
1 Satellites are propagated in this page from CelesTrak's mean elements with J2 drift, not SGP4 — right to a few kilometers for hours around each epoch. The catalog refreshes every two hours.
Imagery: NASA GIBS · NASA/NOAA · USGS · Wikimedia Commons · each photograph credited on its plate.