“On this day in 1969, the photograph Earthrise was published in Life magazine. The picture was taken by William Anders, an astronaut on the Apollo 8 mission, who writes about that moment in A View from Space: “We’d come 240,000 miles to see the moon, and it was the Earth that was really worth looking at.”
As people around the world saw the planet from a distance for the first time, a fundamental shift in human consciousness began. Certainly we knew that Earth was not the center of the universe from a scientific perspective, but to actually see our globe hanging there in space had a startling effect on Life’s readers. Quickly the term Spaceship Earth became popular, as we recognized both the beauty and fragility of our true place in the cosmos.
Every time you see a photograph of the earth, remind yourself that we are all in the picture.”
Brian Nelson
Chorlton Unitarians 