2,383: Earthrise image number

Christmas Eve 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 – Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders – were about to get their first glimpse of the far side of the Moon.

“We fired the spacecraft engine something like four minutes to slow down enough to get into lunar orbit,” says Borman. “We’re about halfway through when we looked down and there was the Moon.”

“The lunar surface was terribly distressed with meteorites, holes, craters, volcanic residue,” he says. “But one of the things that struck me was there's absolutely no colour, it was either grey or black or white.”

“It was a very interesting first view of a different world.”

But the most captivating view came as they swung back around on the fourth orbit and Anders spotted the Earth in the command module window.

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“Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!” he exclaimed. “You got a colour film, Jim? Hand me a roll of colour, quick, would you?”

These cartridges containing reels of 70mm film could be easily swapped on the crew’s Hasselblad cameras.

“Take several, take several of them,” said Lovell. “Here, give it to me!”