Earthrise

During the Apollo 8 mission in December 1968, astronaut Bill Anders was gazing out of his spacecraft window when he spotted something no human had ever seen with their own eyes before. Earth was climbing above the gray edge of the Moon. He reached for his camera and captured the moment, and the photograph became known as "Earthrise." In this black and white version, our planet appears as a small, glowing sphere drifting over the pockmarked lunar surface, with the vast blackness of space stretching out all around it.

The timing gave the picture its power. The year had been packed with unrest and hardship, and then along came a single image showing the whole world as a tiny, delicate thing hanging alone in the dark. People often say this photo helped kickstart the environmental movement, nudging everyone to see Earth as one fragile home shared by all. Anders and his crewmates were pilots and engineers, not trained photographers, yet the shot they took reshaped how we picture our place in the universe.