December 24, 1968, from the Apollo 8 crew. Isn’t it beautiful? Of course, it is not a sunrise of the Earth. As seen from any point on the near side of the moon, the Earth does not rise or bend, but simply hangs in one place on the lunar sky. The astronauts saw the Earth rise as they moved in a spaceship above the moon’s surface.
On Christmas Eve 1968, William Anders, aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft, turned his camera to Earth and took this now legendary photo. It was a photograph that showed people a new perspective, with the moon in the foreground and the Earth floating in distant space. The iconic image helped stimulate the ecological movement.
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NASA’s scientific visualization studio has released the video below on the 45th anniversary of the photo now known as “Sunrise.” The position of Apollo 8 and what the astronauts saw through the spaceship’s windows are recreated and matched to the sound of the flight.
You can hear the voices of Apollo 8 astronauts: Commander Frank Borman and crew members William A. Anders and James A. Lovell. On the fourth orbit of the astronauts’ moon, Borman performed a maneuver to roll their boat, which put them in a position to catch the Earth rising above the lunar horizon. The video conveys the exciting moments as they are surprised by the view for the first time and struggle to get color film to capture the huge photo, while joking that the image is not part of their program.
Dan Rather described the iconic image in his book, What unites us. He explains how he captures the peaceful Earth in the darkness of space and what is really happening on the planet at that moment in history:
This image, so peaceful and yet so astonishing, was made at the end of a turbulent year. It was Christmas Eve 1968, but from there you would never know that a hot war was raging in Vietnam or that a Cold War was dividing Europe. You wouldn’t know about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Bobby Kennedy. From this distance, people are invisible, as are cities, countries and national borders. Everything that separates us from an ethnic, cultural, political and spiritual point of view is missing from the image. What we see is a fragile planet that makes its way through the vastness of space.
With a click of the shutter, our Earth spacecraft and everyone on board were captured by the first people to venture beyond the limits of Earth’s gravity and give us a better picture of our home.
Apollo 8 re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, as photographed from a 40,000-foot USAF KC-135A. Image via @elakdawalla on Twitter.
Bottom line: Sunrise is an iconic photograph taken by astronaut William Anders in the fourth orbit of the moon aboard Apollo 8 on December 24, 1968.
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