Celebrate the “Most Influential” Photo Ever Taken

As a part of our continued “Countdown to Apollo at 50” celebration, the Cradle of Aviation Museum is excited to provide a fun family event during the school holiday break, December 26th – January 1st from 12pm – 4pm to celebrate Earthrise, the famous photograph taken during the Apollo 8 mission of the earth rising over the moon that started the environmental movement. For the first time, the earth was seen as whole and round yet fragile and vulnerable. Visitors will learn about the Apollo missions, the astronauts, and the historic photograph and then can experiment with perspective and create their own “Earthrise” at a Family Activity station. The event is FREE with admission.

On Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1968, Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit. Astronauts-Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders-held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Borman has described it as “the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my life, one that sent a torrent of nostalgia, of sheer homesickness, surging through me. It was the only thing in space that had any color to it. Everything else was simply black or white. But not the Earth.” They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis.

The photo of the Earth rising over the moon, taken by William Anders, on December 24, 1968, soon became known as “Earthrise” and is one of the most famous photographs of all the Apollo missions and most reproduced space photographs of all time, according to NASA. In Life Magazine's 100 Photographs that Changed the World, nature photographer Galen Rowell declared Earthrise, "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken."