The world watched as the Earth disappeared behind the pockmarked moon, in the first video showing humanity’s home planet sinking below the lunar horizon.
The 53-second clip depicting the astronomical phenomenon, known as Earthset, was posted online on Sunday night by the astronaut Reid Wiseman, who took the video on an iPhone this month while aboard the Artemis II shuttle. By late Monday morning, it had been viewed 11 million times.
While Earth dwellers are used to seeing the moon rise and set, the view from the moon is the extraordinary flip side.
The unique vantage point — visible only from orbit or beyond — recalls the iconic Earthrise image by the astronauts aboard Apollo 8 in 1968, when they conducted the very first human journey around the moon.
“Only one chance in this lifetime,” Mr. Wiseman wrote in his post on X. “Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos, I couldn’t resist a cell phone video of Earthset.”
His video offers a sense of proportion, underscoring just how small the Earth is on the grand scale.
It takes about eight seconds for a clear view of a tiny slice of the marbled blue-and-white planet to appear. There is a striking contrast between the pitch-black void of space, the exquisite color of the Earth and the dullish gray moonscape that dwarfs the Earth.
Mr. Wiseman holds the shot, and about halfway through the video, the Earth looks like a bright white orb, with the blue having faded from view. Over the next 20 seconds, it gradually disappears, and the Earthset is complete.
“I could barely see the Moon through the docking hatch window but the iPhone was the perfect size to catch the view,” he wrote. “This is uncropped, uncut with 8x zoom which is quite comparable to the view of the human eye. Enjoy.”
Adeel Hassan, a New York-based reporter for The Times, covers breaking news and other topics.
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