Earthrise is one of the most extraordinary pictures ever taken from space. Taken by the astronaut William Anders from the command module of Apollo 8, the first space mission where humans left low Earth orbit, it shows the Earth rising up above the horizon of the moon as the spacecraft speeded towards the far side of the moon. This profound and beautiful picture became one of the most enduring of all the Apollo mission photographs 鈥� it was published countless times in books and magazines and gave humanity a new perspective on the Earth.
The Earthrise photograph most popularly聽refers to one particular colour image given the technical name聽 which is shown above, but the Apollo 8 astronauts took many photographs looking back at the Earth. The astronauts were caught by surprise when they saw the scene through the window of the command module. The Nasa transcript records Anders saying, 鈥淥h my God! Look at that picture over there! There鈥檚 the Earth coming up. Wow, that鈥檚 pretty.鈥� Conrad Quilty-Harper