File:Apollo 8, Life Jan10,1969.png

"Earthrise", First Human-taken Photos of "Whole Earth"

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8

• http://www.abc.net.au/science/moon/earthrise.htm

'Earthrise', NASA Apollo image, AS08-14-2383, coming into view

December 24, 1968

As the Apollo 8 astronauts circled the Moon, they happened to look out the window and coming into view was .... the home planet, Earth

Rising blue and full of life in the dark blackness of sky, of expansive Space, our living breathing, Earth

Apollo 8 launched on December 21, 1968. With Apollo's "Earthrise" photo, a first of its kind, history was made. Humanity's picture of our place in the universe changed. Life on Earth changed as a result. Cognitive awareness, planetary awareness changed. Environmental awareness changed forever.

Apollo 8 was the first human mission to deep space, deep enough to see the Whole Earth and share images of what they saw. The images were taken "serendipity", they were not planned as part of the mission. It was a magic, monumental event -- and the images forever changed humanity's perspective of ourselves and our home planet.

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Aboard Apollo, December 24, 1968, as the spaceship swings around the Moon and unexpectedly the Earth rises and the astronauts are amazed at what is coming into view ...

Astronaut Bill Anders is the first to see the Earth:

"Oh, my God, look at that picture over there," he can be heard saying. "There's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!"

What happened next will sound familiar to anyone who remembers the days before digital cameras:

Anders (to astronaut Jim Lovell): "You got a color film, Jim? Hand me a roll of color, quick, would you?"

Lovell: "Oh, man, that's great! Where is it?"

Anders: "Hurry. Quick."

Lovell: "Down here?"

Anders: "Just grab me a color. A color exterior. Hurry up. Got one?"

Lovell: "Yeah, I'm lookin' for one. C368."

Anders: "Anything quick."

Lovell hands him the film just as Anders is heard saying, "I think we missed it."

But within seconds, Lovell sees the shot again in another window of the command module. He asks for the camera from Anders, who seems a bit defensive at having his role as mission photographer usurped.

Anders: "Wait a minute, just let me get the right setting here now, just calm down. Calm down, Lovell!"

Anders then gets the shot that has been reproduced innumerable times all over the world...

Changing forever humanity's vision of ourselves, of who we are.

http://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Apollo_8

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Apollo's Earthrise to Earth Day

Time for new beginnings, a modern environmental protection movement... some 16 months after Apollo 8's "Earthrise" photo was first seen on Earth, the first environmental 'teach-in' -- that we called "Earth Day" -- arose with a flourish, offering a whole earth message, new perspective, new ways of seeing. A new identification with the home planet began to be visualized and set in motion... a global environmental movement was being created. As planet citizens we had our work, serious work, in front of us and we got to work.

Beginnings of the modern environmental movement

• https://greenpolicy360.net/images/1969_beginnings_of_the_modern_environmental_movement.pdf

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_movement

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Whole_earth_catalog_1969.jpg

• http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/science/space/14mission.html

The sight moved the poet Archibald MacLeish to write on Christmas Day of that momentous perspective-changing year:

“To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together...”

After the mission, NASA released the color pictures the astronauts had taken of “Earthrise”, celebrated on the cover of Life Magazine in January 1969.

• http://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Apollo.jpg

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Earthrise_book_cover_(2008).jpg

In a 2008 book, “Earthrise” Robert Poole writes of a "spiritual nascence" of the environmental movement... “It is possible to see that Earthrise marked the tipping point, the moment when the sense of the space age flipped from what it meant for space to what it means for Earth.”

Galen Rowell described the Earthrise image as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken".

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