Earthrise, Reprised

The original “Earthrise” photo was taken by Bill Anders during the Apollo 8 mission. 

Notice the cluster of lights on the lunar surface at the lower left of Mark Pestana’s “Home II” (24 by 30 inches, oil on canvas). Those intriguing lights are what, at Apollo 8’s altitude, astronauts could see of  what Pestana imagines: “an ice mining base, near the moon’s north pole, producing water, oxygen, and hydrogen for customers preparing for travel through our solar system. The residents of these frontier outposts will regard Earth as their ancestral home.”

With “Apollo 8” (graphite on paper), Doug Forrest wanted to capture the exact moment when, as the Apollo 8 capsule rolled on its long axis, the home planet appeared in the spacecraft window. Forrest is amused by the hubbub he heard in the recording of the astronauts during the few moments the Earth was visible. “There was a massive scramble,” he says. “Anders was calling for color film, and Lovell was trying to find it.”

What fascinated Robin Hart about Apollo missions was “the contrast between the lifeless sphere of the moon and our Earth, which was so full of life.” With “Luna Victoria,” a 34- by 32-inch triptych painted and airbrushed with gouache and acrylic, she expressed the “human presence” she believed the astronauts carried with them to an alien world.

What if the moon and Earth appeared in the window not of a spacecraft but of an airliner? Does Mark Garlick prophesy an airline that will fly in space, or is this all a dream? “I got the idea spontaneously from just seeing an image of an airplane window. I’m a bit weird like that!” says Garlick, a computer animator with a Ph.D. in astrophysics based in Hove, England. He created “Earth and Moon from Orbit” in 3ds Max and Photoshop.