Shortly after docking, the astronauts had a unique view of the full Earth, with Africa and Antarctica easily visible. This picture of the Earth finds wide-range use, even today. Astronaut Cernan described the view out the window.

The full Earth as seen by Apollo 17.

Cernan: We've got a - I guess probably the continent of Africa dominates the world right now. It's covering the - oh, the upper third - upper and western third of the - of the world. We can see the Sinai we can see up into the Mediterranean; we can see across the Mediterranean, although we can't quite make out the countries up there; we can see across into India. I catch a glimpse of Australia out in the far horizon. Got Zanzibar on the southern tip of Africa, the Cape down there just almost directly below us. And, I don’t know exactly how big Antarctica is, but I guess we can certainly see more than 50 percent of it. And - the rest of it is all ocean. The Indian Ocean out into the Pacific Ocean and back into the Atlantic Ocean. And for the most part relatively clear of clouds except in the Antarctica region, and up towards Europe which is - which is on the horizon, across the Mediterranean, it looks like there might be some clouds back up in that way. I probably - probably - well, not probably - I can make out the entire coast of Africa from Mediterranean around to the west, coming back to the south back where it takes its big dip to the east, back around the Cape, back around up through the Suez Canal, almost perfectly.