File:Earth's Paper-thin Atmosphere (16149273389).png

English: Sometimes what we see depicted in fictional scenes of Earth looks more like the image on the right. It seems plausible because from our vantage point on the surface the sky seems so high. Astronauts experience something which has been called the overview effect when they see for themselves our thin atmosphere and how fragile and precious our planet really is.

Compare the left model which much more closely resembles reality to the right model which is very much a fantasy world. We fly through this tenuous layer as if it were our entire world—endless and immutable.

Created using Blender 2.72b and Cycles render using NASA's Blue Marble data.