Making "Earth"

I'm still in the selecting phase, looking for a suitable background. Most of the galaxy or star field pictures I can find (at Lycos or elsewhere) look great on a computer monitor but are just too black to print well. Those wonderful twinkling stars turn out to be hidden against the vast expanse of blackness. So I had to look for more colorful backgrounds. Fortunately, my copy of Microsoft PictureIt! comes with a library of stock photos, and I found this image which seemed to have potential.