The earth texture was taken from this website:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/BlueMarble_monthlies.html
The composition was made in Photoshop using a background layer of a garden which was shot with a Canon Rebel XT camera. The background picture was taken on the 17th of September, 2006. The Earth was rendered in Maya. For the surface I used texture maps from the Nasa website which are free to use.
The whole composition was made in the end of September 2006 for a photo contest.
I still own all the rights for this image.