A newer version of this visualization is available.
Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary
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- Visualizations by:
- Ernie Wright
- View full credits
In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth.
Using photo mosaics and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), this video commemorates the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8's historic flight by recreating the moment when the crew first saw and photographed the Earth rising from behind the Moon. Narrator Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, sets the scene for a three-minute visualization of the view from both inside and outside the spacecraft accompanied by the onboard audio of the astronauts.
The visualization draws on numerous historical sources, including the actual cloud pattern on Earth from the ESSA-7 satellite and dozens of photographs taken by Apollo 8, and it reveals new, historically significant information about the Earthrise photographs. It has not been widely known, for example, that the spacecraft was rolling when the photos were taken, and that it was this roll that brought the Earth into view. The visualization establishes the precise timing of the roll and, for the first time ever, identifies which window each photograph was taken from.
The key to the new work is a set of vertical stereo photographs taken by a camera mounted in the Command Module's rendezvous window and pointing straight down onto the lunar surface. It automatically photographed the surface every 20 seconds. By registering each photograph to a model of the terrain based on LRO data, the orientation of the spacecraft can be precisely determined.
Andrew Chaikin's article Who Took the Legendary Earthrise Photo From Apollo 8?
appeared in the January, 2018 issue of Smithsonian magazine. It includes the story of the making of this visualization.
A Google Hangout discussion of this visualization between Ernie Wright (creator of the visualization), Andrew Chaikin, John Keller (LRO project scientist), and Aries Keck (NASA media specialist) was held on December 20, 2013. A replay of that hangout is available here.
Ernie Wright presented a talk about the making of this animation at the 2014 SIGGRAPH Conference in Vancouver. He also wrote a NASA Wavelength blog entry about Earthrise that includes links to educator resources related to LRO.
The full video, with narration by Andrew Chaikin. You can also watch this video on the NASAexplorer YouTube channel. For complete transcript, click here.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
An external view of the spacecraft as the Earth rises in the distance. The first frame corresponds to 10:37:19 a.m. Central Standard (Houston) Time, 16:37:19.0 Universal Time, and 75:46:19.0 Mission Elapsed Time. The frames cover an elapsed time of exactly three minutes. This frame set and several of the others are synchronized in time.
An idealized view of Earth rising above the lunar terrain, using a focal length similar to the telephoto lens used for the Earthrise photographs. For the 1920 × 1080 frame set, the first frame corresponds to 75:47:06 MET, which is 47 seconds (1410 frames) later than the other synchronized frame sets. The 3840 × 2160 frame set covers the full three-minute interval starting at 75:46:19 MET.

The three Earthrise photographs, scaled and rotated to match the telephoto view of the preceeding frame set. They correspond to frames 1092, 2814, and 3545 of the 1920 × 1080 frames, and to frames 2502, 4224, and 4955 of the 3840 × 2160 frames. The original photographs are AS08-13-2329, AS08-14-2383, and AS08-14-2384.
A nadir view of the lunar surface, overlaid with Apollo 8 vertical stereo photographs. This frame set is synchronous with others that begin at 75:46:19 MET. It shows photos AS08-12-2135 through AS08-12-2144 on magazine D.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Andrew Chaikin appears courtesy of the Lunar and Planetary Institute. Spacecraft model by Stuart Howes.
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Animator
- Ernie Wright (USRA) [Lead]
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Video editor
- Dan Gallagher (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Scientists
- John Keller (NASA/GSFC)
- Noah Petro (NASA/GSFC)
- Richard Vondrak (NASA/GSFC)
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Producers
- Andrew Chaikin (None)
- Dan Gallagher (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
- Ernie Wright (USRA)
- Noah Petro (NASA/GSFC)
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Narration
- Andrew Chaikin (None)
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Narrator
- Andrew Chaikin (None)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Tapes
This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:-
Earthrise 45th Anniversary
(ID: 2013102)
Thursday, December 19, 2013 at 5:00AM
Produced by - Dan Jacob
Datasets used in this visualization
Apollo 8 Trajectory Reconstruction
Terra Blue Marble (Collected with the MODIS sensor)
Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).
See more visualizations using this data setLRO DEM (A.K.A. Digital Elevation Map) (Collected with the LOLA sensor)
LRO WAC 643nm High Sun Global Mosaic (Collected with the LROC sensor)
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.