Apollo 15 was the 4th NASA mission to land astronauts on the moon. On the way home in early August 1971, Lunar Module Pilot Jim Irwin picked up a Hasselblad camera on board and captured this amazing sequence of the crescent Earth, illuminated by sunlight from the side and basked in the beam of a lens flare.

Earth from Apollo 15

This striking view of Earth was captured by NASA Moonwalker Jim Irwin as Apollo 15 was 113,437 nautical miles [210,085 km] from Earth during the homeward journey from the Moon in August 1971. With the Sun very near the camera’s field of view in front of the spacecraft returning to Earth, the Home Planet appears as a very thin crescent increasing in size, illuminated by sunlight from the side and basked in the beam of a lens flare. At the same moment the astronauts could see a full Moon receding behind them. Worden used the Hasselblad camera fitted with a special UV transmitting 105mm lens and a particular 70mm film magazine (99/N) containing spectroscopic film for ultraviolet photographs.