page_title: Earthrise
section_title: Geometry
hierarchical_section_title: Earthrise / Geometry
caption_attribution_description: English: Earthrise - Apollo 8 Hasselblad image from film magazine 14/B - Lunar Orbit, Trans-Earth Coast
context_page_description: Earthrise is a photograph of Earth and some of the Moon's surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. Nature photographer Galen Rowell declared it "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken".
  Anders' color image had been preceded by a crude black-and-white 1966 raster image taken by the Lunar Orbiter 1 robotic probe, the first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon.
context_section_description: William Anders' first color Earthrise photo, in its orientation as seen by the crew of Apollo 8. Lunar north is up.
  The as-taken image was rotated 90 degrees clockwise to produce the iconic published Earthrise orientation because the original image did not convey the sense of the Earth rising over the moonscape.
  The as-published photograph shows Earth:
  Polar orientation: south to left, north to right (Antarctica at 10 o'clock)
  Equator: centre, running westward toward top right-hand corner
  Nightfall terminator crossing the African continent (lightish region to left is Namib Desert, Namibia; to right is Western Sahara/West Africa)
  Rotated clockwise approximately 135° from our typical North/South-Pole-oriented perspective
caption: AS08-14-2383 (21713574299), from which "Earthrise" was cropped. The photo is displayed here in its original orientation.
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