NASA Recreated the Moment When Apollo 8 Astronauts Captured the Iconic Earthrise Photograph

It's one of the most well-known photographs from space—“Earthrise,” the Earth, rising above the lunar horizon, as captured by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders.

In the Apollo 8 spacecraft, a cockpit recorder was taping the excited conversation of the three astronauts—Frank Borman, James Lovell and Bill Anders—as the rising Earth popped into view.

Working with those cockpit recordings, and with lunar mapping data captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA has put together a gripping video, a intricate look at what, exactly, the NASA astronauts would have been seeing out their windows when Earthrise was photographed.

NASA | Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary

Watch on

According to Andrew Chaikin for the Planetary Society, who spoke with NASA's Ernie Wright, who helped make the video:

You can actually hear the Hasselblad's shutter and motorized film advance on the tape (and on the new video), as Anders snaps these historic photographs. That allowed Ernie to pin down the exact moment at which each image was taken.

The video is very reminiscent of another, a full-length movie called First Orbit, which combined cockpit recordings of Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin's 1961 trip into space with matching footage captured from the International Space Station.

First Orbit - the movie

Watch on

Both videos give a glimpse of spaceflight as it really is, a slow, barren, but sometimes beautiful journey—a far cry from the hyperspeed timelapses that permeate our recent portrayals of life in orbit.

More from Smithsonian.com:

An Apollo Rocket Engine Was Just Saved from the Bottom of the Atlantic
Here’s What Nixon Would Have Said If Apollo 11 Hadn’t Landed

Colin Schultz | | READ MORE

Colin Schultz is a freelance science writer and editor based in Toronto, Canada. He blogs for Smart News and contributes to the American Geophysical Union. He has a B.Sc. in physical science and philosophy, and a M.A. in journalism.