Aretmis II astronauts have managed to recreate one of the most iconic space photos in history, as the crew aboard Orion beams back images from the historic lunar flyby. “Earthset” is a photograph taken out one of the Orion spacecraft windows that shows a “crescent” Earth setting over a darkened lunar surface.
The photograph, captured with a Nikon D5 DSLR and a 80-400mm lens, recreates one of the most iconic space images in history, mirroring the 1968 “Earthrise” photo taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders with a Hasselblad film camera and 250mm lens.
While the original 1968 photo was of the Earth rising over the moon, the Artemis II images captures the Earth “setting” over the surface of the moon. In the image, the sun lights up only a portion of the Earth, giving our home planet the shape of a crescent Moon, while the dark side of the moon fills the foreground.
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Recreating the iconic 1968 photograph was on the Artemis II crew’s planned to-do list, and despite being farther from the moon than Apollo 8 – setting a record for the furthest humans have ever traveled into space – the new photograph mirrors the original.
Differences in the Artemis II paths and the moon phases means the Moon isn’t lit in the 2026 photo like it is in the 1968 image. Despite this, and the image only being a few hours old, I fully expect the new Earthset photograph to be just as historic as the original.
While the photograph was taken in orbit, the 400mm zoom lens makes the viewer feel as if they are standing on the moon and looking back on Earth. The 1968 photograph was taken during the Vietnam War and is thought to have helped spark a worldwide environmental movement, leading to the creation of Earth Day.
The photograph was captured on April 6 at 6:41 PM EDT through one of Orion’s windows. The lit portion of the Earth shows swirling clouds over Australia and Oceania, NASA notes. On the surface of the moon, the Ohm crater is visible. The photo was shared on Flickr – and NASA hasn’t yet noted which of the four astronauts on board took the photo.
The image was captured with a Nikon D5 – a DSLR that’s now ten years old – and an 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 zoom lens. That’s a far cry from the medium format film Hasselblad 500 EL that captured the original image, demonstrating the technology shift over the last 58 years.
One of the things that speaks to the changes in technology is how detailed the surface of the moon is in the modern 2026 photograph. In the original photo, the portion of the moon in the foreground was lit, but the Artemis II shot depicts a dark portion of the moon. Despite that, there are still plenty of details in the shadowy moon, without overexposing the Earth in the distance.
The image speaks to the dynamic range – the range of light a camera can capture without overexposing the brightest portions or underexposing the shadows – of modern cameras, despite being taken with a decade old DSLR.
The Artemis II flight has 32 cameras on board – and 17 of those are handheld devices, including Nikon D5 DSLRs, a Nikon Z9, GoPros and the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Much like many modern photographers, the astronauts appear to be taing images with both the high-end interchangeable lens cameras and the smartphones, as Commander Reid Weismann shared a photo he took on the iPhone during a livestream.
Along with the new but iconic Earthset photograph, the crew aboard the Orion has also shared detailed close-ups of the lunar surface from the path along the dark side of the moon. The crew will likely have an even larger wealth of photographs to share after the scheduled splashdown on Friday, April 10.
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