William Anders, who recently was killed in a plane crash, was one of the astronauts on Apollo 8. He was one of the first three humans to orbit the moon. And he was the one who took the famous "earthrise" photo, but the way the astronauts saw things was as shown in the photo below. Their ship was orbiting the moon, roughly following the moon's equator. So the moon was on their left, and as they were emerging from the far side, they suddenly saw a bright object coming "around the bend." At first they were puzzled, as this was not the direction in which the sun would be. And then they realized it was the Earth! It took them completely by surprise, as they did not expect the Earth to be so spectacular.
Later on, a newspaper editor rotated the photo to make it look like an "earthrise". But it was the motion of the spacecraft that caused the earth to "rise". Since the moon is gravitationally locked with earth so that one side of the moon faces earth at all times, you will never see an earthrise or earthset from the surface of the moon.
RIP, William Anders.
This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »
