What if you could see Earth from the Moon?

We look up and see the Moon. What if you stood on the Moon and looked up?

You would see Earth, our home! Let's find out what it looks like.

Every month we watch the Moon change shape in our sky. But what would it be like to stand on the Moon and look back at Earth? Would Earth change shape too? Would it rise and set?

Astronauts and spacecraft have already sent back amazing pictures of Earth from near the Moon. This is a thought experiment. Choose a path to see Earthrise, find out why Earth has phases and look at our blue planet the way astronauts did.

The Earth-Moon geometry that gives us lunar phases works in reverse for an observer on the Moon. NASA explains, for instance, that when we see a crescent Moon, Earth is nearly full from the Moon's perspective, bright enough that its reflected light dimly lights the Moon's dark side.

This thought experiment places you on the lunar surface. Evidence comes from Apollo photography, from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and from the Artemis II crew's 2026 flyby. Where descriptions depend on standing at a particular spot on the Moon, they are geometric ideas, labeled as such.

From Earth, we see the Moon change. Sometimes it is round and bright. Sometimes it is a thin smile.

The Sun always lights half of the Moon. We see different amounts of that bright half.

NASA explains that the Sun always lights half of the Moon, just as it lights half of Earth. As the Moon goes around Earth, we see different amounts of its sunlit half. That's why we get a full Moon, a half Moon and thin crescents.

The Moon is about 384,400 kilometers away on average, far enough that 30 Earth-sized planets could fit in between. It is also much smaller than Earth: if Earth were the size of a nickel, the Moon would be about as big as a coffee bean.

NASA notes that the Sun is the only object in the solar system shining by its own light; it always illuminates half of Earth and half of the Moon. The Moon's phases are our changing view of its sunlit hemisphere as it orbits, in a cycle of about 29.5 days.

The Moon averages 384,400 km away, room for 30 Earths in between, and its radius of about 1,740 km makes it less than a third of Earth's width. From the Moon, then, Earth would appear wider in the sky than the Moon appears from Earth, since it is a much larger body at the same distance.

On the Moon, the sky is black, even in the daytime. There is no air to make it blue.

Earth would hang up there, blue and white and much bigger than the Moon looks to us.

Imagine standing on the Moon. NASA says the Moon's sky is pitch black. On Earth, air scatters sunlight and makes the sky blue, but the Moon has almost no air. Up in that black sky, you'd see Earth with its blue oceans, white clouds and land.

Earth is much wider than the Moon, so it would look bigger than the Moon does from Earth. And because one side of the Moon always faces Earth, from that side Earth might seem to stay in about the same part of your sky while it slowly changed shape. That's an idea from geometry.

NASA describes a pitch-black lunar sky above an exosphere so thin that a cubic centimeter of Earth's air holds a hundred trillion times as many molecules; NASA Space Place explains that Earth's blue sky comes from air scattering sunlight. Earth, more than three times as wide as the Moon, would subtend a correspondingly larger angle than the Moon does from Earth.

Because the Moon is tidally locked, an observer on the near side might see Earth hold roughly the same position in the sky, cycling through phases instead of rising and setting; from the middle of the far side, Earth might never be visible at all. These follow from the synchronous rotation NASA describes, but they are geometric ideas, not observations reported on the pages cited here.

The Sun lights half of Earth, too. From the Moon, you see some of the bright half and some of the dark half.

So Earth looks like it changes shape, just like the Moon does for us!

Earth has phases for the same reason the Moon does: the Sun lights only half of it at a time. From the Moon, you'd see different amounts of Earth's daytime side as the Moon moves around us.

The phases are opposites. When we see a crescent Moon, Earth looks nearly full from the Moon. Its light, called earthshine, bounces back and dimly lights the dark part of the Moon. You can sometimes see that faint glow yourself.

Phases arise from viewing geometry, not from any change in illumination: each body always has one sunlit hemisphere. Seen from the Moon, Earth's phase is complementary to the Moon's as seen from Earth.

NASA's description of earthshine shows this directly. During a lunar crescent, Earth is nearly full from the Moon's perspective, so sunlight reflecting off Earth is strong enough to faintly illuminate the Moon's Earth-facing night side, visible from home as the dim glow inside a crescent. NASA's Artemis II images of April 2026 show the reverse case: a crescent Earth beside a partly lit Moon.

In 1968, astronauts flew around the Moon. Bill Anders took a photo of Earth rising above the Moon. It is called Earthrise!

In 2026, new astronauts took a photo of Earth setting behind the Moon.

On December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders became the first humans to orbit the Moon and to see Earth rise above its surface. Anders took the famous Earthrise photo.

In 1972, the Apollo 17 crew photographed Earth on their way to the Moon, a picture called the Blue Marble. And on April 6, 2026, NASA's Artemis II crew photographed a crescent Earth setting behind the Moon: an Earthset.

NASA records that Apollo 8's Borman, Lovell and Anders became the first humans to orbit the Moon and the first to see an Earthrise; Anders took the Earthrise photo on December 24, 1968, as their spacecraft circled the Moon. On December 7, 1972, the Apollo 17 crew, en route to the Moon, took the Blue Marble, the first Apollo view to capture the south polar ice cap.

Robotic cameras continue the record: NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imaged Earth from lunar orbit on June 12, 2010, about 372,335 km away. On April 6, 2026, the Artemis II crew photographed a crescent Earthset while passing behind the far side during a seven-hour flyby.