SOLD. An original NASA colour offset photograph of the earth seen from Apollo 11 on...

Neil Armstrong: An original NASA colour offset photograph of the earth seen from Apollo 11 on July 20th 1969. Photo size 28×35 cm. Frame size 33×43 cm.

The very first image of the earth seen from space was taken on October 24th 1946. That day a group of American scientists succeeded in launching a rocket with a built-in camera. It went up 105 kilometres from where the exposure was made. The launching took place at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

The photographs by Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin (b. 1930) - the present being one of the most famous - inserted itself in history in another fashion, namely by being the first photographs taken by human beings. The quality of the images created by the two men on July 21st and July 22nd 1969 is high - ironically so high that conspiracy theorists ever since have used exactly this as an argument: How should it be possible at that day and age and under the given circumstances to produce such excellent photographs?