Photograph by Bettmann / Getty Images
Words by Kyle MacNeill
Ron Garan still remembers the first time he saw our planet from space. How on Earth could he not?
“It was a feeling of unity,” he said over the phone, his unwavering sense of wonder resonating through the radio waves. “I felt deeply interconnected and interdependent with everyone and everything.” A decorated NASA astronaut, Garan has spent 178 days in space, traveled 71 million miles, walked in space for more than 27 hours, and orbited the Earth 2,842 times. But his core memory is still seeing our home from afar: “There’s nothing comparable.”
This moment changed his worldview forever. His writing about it captures the same sense of the sublime as the Romantic poets’ paeans to nature; it’s rhapsodic and effusive, praising Earth’s beauty and tenderness. “I was hit with the realization that this delicate layer of atmosphere is all that protects every living thing on Earth from perishing in the harshness of space,” he wrote in The Orbital Perspective. Garan literally saw the big picture. Suddenly, he understood our cosmic connection to Earth.
The phenomenon he experienced is known as the Overview Effect. First described by Frank White in 1987, it encompasses the psychological, or perhaps psychedelic, experience of gazing at the Earth from afar—and anecdotally causes a newfound appreciation for our planet. White, a space philosopher and author, believes he himself had a “mild experience” when looking out the window of a plane. It took him on a journey of interviewing scores of astronauts who had all reported experiencing the Overview Effect, and subsequently moved into climate activism.
In 2016, a group of psychologists from the University of Pennsylvania endorsed the Overview Effect as a “state of awe” and self-transcendence caused by a simultaneous perceptual and conceptual vastness. Essentially, it’s like seeing an endless ocean and understanding infinity at the exact same time.
How that state of awe impacts an individual is as varied as the experience itself.
In her 2020 paper “The Ecological Significance of the Overview Effect,” Ph.D. candidate Anaïs Voski argues that her research shows the phenomenon has a significant impact on astronauts’ environmental behaviors. “Spaceflight increases pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours in astronauts,” the piece concludes.
Science historian Jordan Bimm is more skeptical, arguing that it could be a self-fulfilling philosophy whereby astronauts, operating in a competitive industry, feel pressured to echo positive sentiments after experiencing the Overview Effect; more of an Overview Affect. He also suggests that it can lead to the Overlord Effect—a Godlike attitude emerging from a feeling that we have mastered the universe and colonized space. For others, witnessing the Earth’s fragility can lead to paralyzing grief rather than inspiring gratitude. “It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral,” William Shatner wrote in his 2022 book, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, after his 2021 flight on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin spaceflight mission.
If the Copernican Revolution was a gestalt shift, moving from an Earth-centred universe to a sun-centered universe, so too is the Overview Effect. Conversely, it puts our planet back at the figurative center. It’s like stepping outside of yourself, seeing your face without a mirror or dancing out of time with your own shadow. It’s a breakthrough, an understanding, a sense of enlightenment, a flash of satori, an instinctive impossibility. “It was an overwhelming sense of oneness and connectedness… accompanied by an ecstasy… an epiphany,” Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell wrote.
“I felt deeply interconnected and interdependent with everyone and everything.”
We have, of course, not known exactly what the Earth looks like for that long. “Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose,” astronomer Fred Hoyle foresaw in 1948. The first photo of Earth from space—which came two years prior—was a grainy, black-and-white close-up that pales in comparison to, say, a Gameboy Camera.
But everything changed in December 1968 when William Anders’ photograph of the Earth from Apollo 8, the iconic Earthrise picture, was published by Life magazine. The image was accompanied by a poem by James Dickey: “And behold / The blue planet steeped in its dream / Of reality, its calculated vision shaking with the only love.” It was this collective experience of seeing Earth for the first time by people all over the world that has been credited with galvanizing climate activism. The inaugural Earth Day—held two years later in 1970—was inspired by Earthrise; a new wave of philosophies, including the Gaia hypothesis and Spaceship Earth, came after 1972’s photograph “The Blue Marble,” which captured the entire planet from space for the first time.
Since then, we have been saturated with Earth imagery to the point that the globe is now a stock icon of sorts: a textbook symbol, or clichéd logo. Yet, only the 676 astronauts who traveled to space have been able to actually see the Earth firsthand and experience its powerful psychological impact. “If only 100 people had ever seen a flower,” Garan said, “they would feel a responsibility and obligation to share that with everybody else.”
But getting people to experience the real thing is a distant dream. Virgin Atlantic’s founders have said they believe private space travel could change the world through the Overview Effect, but its exclusivity (and devastating environmental impact) means getting more people on board isn’t a viable environmental solution.
Artists in the last several years have tried to replicate the Overview Effect, bringing it back down to Earth to address climate apathy.
Loie Hollowell’s Overview Effect exhibition, which opened in November 2024 at the Pace Gallery in Los Angeles, featured six op-art paintings inspired by the vantage point of space. Earlier in 2024, the Science Gallery in London showcased a series of video artworks from Tang Han, Ruth Waters, and Rachel Rose aiming to evoke feelings of interconnectedness with the Earth. Even Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital, 2024’s Booker Prize winner, follows six astronauts aboard the International Space Station as they reflect on the existence of God and the threat of the climate crisis.
Most gravitational, though, is Luke Jerram’s touring artwork “Gaia,” a 3D reproduction of the home planet created from 120dpi NASA imagery of the Earth’s surface and measuring nearly 30 feet in diameter. Stand about 700 feet from it, and you can see the Earth as it appears from the moon. “The opportunity of [Apollo 11] wasn’t just to go to the moon but to look back at the Earth,” Jerram said in an interview. “Gaia” is the natural evolution of Earthrise, only Jerram uses internal lighting to create a vivid facade. “Early imagery of the Earth didn’t capture people’s imaginations because they were blurry, black-and-white images,” he said. “Add color and suddenly you have an emotional impact.”
There are several versions of “Gaia” simultaneously touring across the globe, with Jerram often exhibiting the work in churches. “If you imagine you’re living in the 13th century in a mud hut and believe in Christ, and you walk for five weeks to go to a cathedral—when you finally get there and see the largest space you’ve ever seen, it would be an incredibly profound experience,” he says. “By placing my artwork into context it helps to inspire that sense of awe and wonder.”
“While the original experience may be reserved for astronauts, its essence—its ability to inspire awe, unity, and a sense of responsibility for Earth—can extend far beyond the stars.”
Other Overview Effect enthusiasts are taking a more literal approach, aiming to simulate rather than replicate the phenomenon. EarthScape VR, set up by mental health expert Dr. Annahita Nezami and virtual-reality developer Charlie Perring, offers a 25-minute immersive experience beamed into a headset.
While working on her doctorate study, Nezami had a vision to recreate the Overview Effect by blending visuals, sounds, and haptic feedback. “The Overview Effect, with its amalgamation of beauty, temporality, expansiveness, familiarity, dynamism, motion, and fragility, serves as a gateway to deeper introspection [and] emotional response,” she said. Nezami and Perring rendered their own visuals to make it feel more real. “The technology has only recently become good enough to do this in a meaningful way,” Perring said, “as there is no really high-quality real footage of Earth from space of the sort we wanted.”
They believe the impact has been astronomical. “The responses have been overwhelmingly positive,” Nezami said. “Over 4,000 people have experienced our standalone VR programs and many describe a sense of awe and a renewed connection to the natural world.”
There’s often a powerful afterglow, too—“Some people need a few minutes after the experience to ‘come back to Earth,’” Perring said. “People’s responses are very varied, with some having very strong emotional responses and others less affected by the experience.” Studies have concluded that the brain can’t easily distinguish between VR and reality, meaning that our responses to both can be equally impactful.
Can we really feel the Overview Effect from Earth? Or are we, like White, simply staring outside of an aeroplane window, microdosing the synthetic analog of the real thing? “Although the direct Overview Effect is unique to astronauts,” Nezami said, “we’ve found that well-crafted simulations, such as those delivered through VR and art, can significantly shift people’s perspectives. Research increasingly suggests that the Overview Effect has therapeutic potential, offering benefits that extend beyond awe to include improved mental health.”
Jerram concedes, however, that there are limitations. “My artwork is no way as good as the real thing,” he said, noting that astronauts see something infinitely detailed that constantly changes with the weather patterns. “But it points people towards what it might be.” And Garan, who has actually experienced the Overview Effect, believes the difficulty is mimicking its extraterrestrial nature. “When you’re viewing the planet from space you’re outside the frame of the masterpiece and gravity isn’t pushing you down. You’re detached from what you’re observing.”
The philosophy, though, is still something that can be applied. We might not experience the exact level of sublime, but we can still learn from why seeing the Earth from afar moves us. “While the original experience may be reserved for astronauts, its essence—its ability to inspire awe, unity, and a sense of responsibility for Earth—can extend far beyond the stars,” Nezami said.
For Garan, it’s about living a more awesome existence. “What’s going to move the needle on climate change is wonder,” he said. “Fear is a powerful emotion but it’s short term.” And while the Overview Effect is one way to flick the “lightbulb” on and illuminate the bigger picture, so is a more mindful appreciation of life on Earth.
“One of the things I’ve taken back from space is this realization that we are constantly surrounded by awe, wonder, and beauty every day,” he said. It’s proof that the everyday can be nothing short of extraordinary.
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Can a Sense of Awe Inspire a New Worldview?
