The Apollo 8 mission on Christmas Eve of 1968 was the first time men flew to the moon. While Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders didn’t land – that would be left for Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin seven months later – they were the inaugural humans to leave the bounds of Earth's orbit.
As part of their flight, the crew captured awe-inspiring photos looking back at Earth. Anders, all of 35 at the time and the most junior of the team, was at the “right place, right time,” as he describes it. His photo was selected by NASA to represent the mission, and later became an iconic of the Twentieth Century.
I had a chance to discuss the experience with Anders, now 81. It’s interesting what he was thinking as he snapped away, not at all what readers might imagine.
Astronaut Bill Anders took this historic photo of Earth on the Apollo 8 mission in December of 1968.... [+]
JC: Why did your picture capture so much attention?
BA: The view points out the beauty of Earth, and its fragility. It helped kick start the environmental movement. That little atmospheric thing you and I enjoy is nothing more than the skin on an apple. It's curious to me that the press and people on the ground have kind of forgotten our history-making voyage, and what's symbolic of the flight now is the “Earthrise” picture. Here we came all the way to the moon to discover Earth.
JC: How did the shot come about?
BA: The moon looks like one beat-up, sandblasted ball up close. I use the un-poetic description “dirty beach sand” -- you can imagine how the poets give me hell. Once we circularized orbit and ended up going forward for the first time, me, Lovell and Borman suddenly said at once, "Look at that” - this gorgeous, colorful, beautiful planet of ours coming up over the ugly lunar horizon. All of us are fighter pilots, engineers, astronauts -- not photographers. But when the Earth came up, we clamored for cameras. I had them all on my side of the spacecraft.
Apollo 8 crew (l-r) Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Jim Lovell just before their 1968 historic flight.... [+]
JC: So you controlled access [laughs]?
BA: Borman said, "Give me a camera, Anders!" I was using a simple one with a short lens and black and white film, but him being the boss, I scooted it over. Lovell also wanted one, so that left one for me – with a long lens and color film. I did not like the long lens because it was heavy and might bang into the instrument panel. Then we all started blazing away. My side window was clear -- the rest had some kind of oil scraped on them. My great photographic technique was to point this thing at the moon and change F-stops with every click [laughs]. As it turned out, one of my color long-lens pictures was decided by NASA to be the official “Earthrise.”
JC: What were you thinking as you took the photos?
BA: I felt a little guilty. We were saving film. Our objective was not to take pictures of the Earth. There were lots of lunar craters I was supposed to shoot, and approaches to future landing sites, but here I was, off mission, taking unauthorized pictures! Later I'm getting Emmys and being made a member of the photographer’s union, all the while thinking this is a little phony. “Earthrise” isn't that good of a picture if you really look at it; it’s not quite in focus. Photographers are probably jealous it was picked as one of the top pictures of the Twentieth Century, but right place, right time!
