"...The astronauts gasped at the sight of Earth, a blue and white orb sparkling in the blackness of space, in contrast to the dead lunar surface in the foreground. People at home saw the full Earth only in black-and-white television images. Even so, the sight moved the poet Archibald MacLeish to write in The Times on Christmas Day:

"To see the Earth as it truly is,
small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats,
is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together,
brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold —
brothers who know now they are
truly brothers."

After the mission, NASA released the color pictures the astronauts had taken of "Earthrise." These were even more inspiring and humbling, the mission's prized keepsake. Time magazine closed out the troubled year with the Earthrise photograph on its cover, with a one-word caption, "Dawn." ..."

((NYT)