“Earthrise” is one of the most famous photographs ever taken — a color image of Earth rising above the lunar horizon, taken during the Apollo 8 mission on December 24, 1968.
Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth orbit and travel to the Moon, orbiting it ten times without landing. On the fourth orbit, astronaut William Anders captured the photo as the crew watched Earth appear over the lunar horizon from their spacecraft. Command module pilot Jim Lovell and mission commander Frank Borman were also aboard; the moment was actually somewhat unplanned and spontaneous — the crew scrambled to find color film as they realized what they were seeing, with some quick back-and-forth about who had the camera loaded.
The image shows a partially shadowed Earth — blue oceans, swirling white clouds, and brown landmasses — suspended above the stark, gray, lifeless lunar surface. The contrast between the vibrant, living Earth and the barren Moon is central to why the image resonates so strongly.
Earthrise is often credited as one of the most influential environmental images in history. It gave humanity one of its first direct visual reminders that Earth is a small, fragile, and isolated world floating in the vastness of space — a perspective sometimes called the “overview effect.” Nature photographer Galen Rowell later called it “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.”
The image is widely credited with helping galvanize the modern environmental movement, arriving shortly before the first Earth Day in 1970 and the founding of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It’s also frequently cited alongside the later “Blue Marble” photo (taken during Apollo 17 in 1972) as one of the defining images of Earth from space.
Apollo 8’s flight came at a tense moment in the Space Race and in American history — 1968 had been marked by political assassinations, war, and social unrest. The mission’s Christmas Eve broadcast, during which the crew read from the Book of Genesis while orbiting the Moon, was watched by a huge global audience and is remembered as one of the most-watched television broadcasts of its time.