The first ever complete colour picture of planet earth in human history goes under the hammer in London next week.
Taken in 1967, from 22,300 miles above the surface of the earth, it offered a view of the planet which nobody had ever seen before.
When it was released to the public, the picture caused huge excitement as it was the first time people had been able to see the planet in all its colourful glory. Sarah Wheeler, photographic expert at Bloomsbury, which is handling the sale, said: 'It is a very dramatic picture for the time and it caused great excitement across the globe.
'It actually came from a weather satellite which was up there to transmit images to be of use to weather forecasters back on earth.
'It was mainly to look out for major events such as cyclones and hurricanes and to learn more about cloud formations.' The historic snap was captured by a Nasa 'spin cloud camera' on November 5, 1967 from the American geostationary equatorial satellite ATS-III, positioned 22,300 miles above Brazil.
The picture was transmitted back to Earth via radio signal in 2,400 separate lines to form the colourful image.
The full picture was finally seen for the first time on November 18, 1967. Ms Wheeler said: 'It got a consistent picture of the same fixed spot looking at the changing patterns of the weather on earth.
'The camera was invented by Dr Verner Suomi and he and his colleagues called it a spin scan cloud camera.
'The camera was taking a series of photographs every 24 minutes and sending them back to earth.
'They were transmitted as radio signals. Each of the 2,400 lines took a slice which was roughly two nautical miles.
'It would have been transmitted back to earth within a matter of minutes.
'NASA were of course looking at it in a scientific way so probably didn't know quite how excited the general public would be by it.
'They were taking these images so meterologists and geographers could study them.
'It is a great photo and the image has become iconic.
'People were simply amazed by it. They were seeing the world in colour for the very first time.
'We take it for granted now but back then lots of people had no idea what our planet actually looked like.'
The image will be auctioned at Bloomsbury's London sale room on December 12, and is expected to sell for 6,202.7€
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