50 years ago on Christmas Eve (Dec 24, 1968), the astronauts aboard Apollo 8 took an amazing series of photos of the rising earth behind the limb of the moon, while in orbit. The first photo was black and white, and subsequent ones (with the earth having risen farther from the moon horizon) were color, and now with some digital magic, these are combined into one image. Glorious.
“Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth comin’ up. Wow, is that pretty!” — Astronaut Bill Anders, Apollo 8
Featured on APOD; Original image credit Apollo 8 / NASA; processing by Jim Weigang; CC license and google photo album.