A welcome to the events from Olly Gruner (Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture, University of Portsmouth) followed by introductory remarks from Claudia Maraston (Professor of Astrophysics, Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth). Claudia discusses the extraordinariness of our Blue Marble from the point of view of an astrophysicist studying space, the universe, and the thousands of other planetary "marbles" known to exist. She notes that of the 5000 planets that we are aware of, only a few hundred could be similar to the Blue Marble. The planet with the closest similarity to Earth is 2700 light years away, which emphasises how important, "precious" and unusual our planet is. You can join Claudia's talk 11 minutes into the recording. She also introduced Jennifer Levasseur (16mins 35 secs), who gave the first of our public talks (listen below). Click below to see the visual work devoted to the Blue Marble created by 3rd year Graphic Design student Josh Langley (referenced 10 minutes into the introduction).