Artemis II astronaut films Earth setting behind the moon with just his iPhone

The Earth setting behind the moon has for the first time in human history been captured on video… on an Apple iPhone.

Reid Wiseman, one of the Artemis II astronauts to do a lap around our neighbour this month, filmed the celestial event on an iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Posting on X, Wiseman shared a 53-second video shot through Integrity’s docking hatch window of an ‘Earthset’, an earthly version of a sunset.

It begins with Wiseman trying to focus the camera on the moon

The spacefarer can be heard commenting, ‘Would you look at that, man,’ as another crew member responds: ‘Wow.’

Wiseman wrote: ‘Only one chance in this lifetime… Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos, I couldn’t resist a cell phone video of Earthset.’

Wiseman added that the iPhone was the ‘perfect size’ to capture the moonshot.

‘This is uncropped, uncut with 8x zoom, which is quite comparable to the view of the human eye,’ the commander said. (Though, an 8x zoom would be about 200m, while the human eye is a mere 50mm.)

Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman replied to Wiseman with a simple: ‘Yes.’

Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy said it was ‘quite possibly the most incredible video ever captured by a phone. Bravo’.

Another user agreed, saying that it’s an ‘incredible time to be alive’.

‘Can you imagine showing this video to someone born anytime before, like 1920?’ they added.

The video was taken as the Artemis II crew swooped around the moon’s far side, also called the dark side despite not being dark at all.

For 40 minutes, the astronauts had no contact with Earth. Just them, the moon, the blue crescent of Earth and all 8.3 billion of us on it.

Photos from the lunar flyby show the Mare Orientale, a dark, ringed 600-mile-wide crater, which no pair of human eyes has ever seen in full.

They even saw a 53-minute solar eclipse from a vantage point no human has ever experienced – the sun slipping behind the moon.

A halo of wispy light leaked from the sides as a twinkly Venus, Mars and Saturn floated in the abyss behind it.

The moment the Earth poked from behind the moon’s pale grey edge is an Earthrise, which humans saw for the first time in 1968.

Artemis II pilot Victor Glover said that it was tricky to take a photograph of the moment.

‘Humans probably have not evolved to see what we’re seeing,’ Glover said.

‘It is truly hard to describe. It is amazing.’

Wiseman, Glover and fellow crew members Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen safely landed on Earth on April 10, splashing down in the Pacific.

By reuniting with gravity, the team have helped pave the way for Nasa’s future Artemis missions to put astronauts back on the moon.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.