Ritt der Walküren

one of the hardest photos of all time, jeez https://t.co/ck8UlLYQyK pic.twitter.com/ltsaTRgM02

— cosmictylxr 🛰️ (@cosmictylxr) October 3, 2025

I probably wouldn't have remarked on this, but somebody replied:

Surely a composite they weren't that far from the equator to make the earth that low to the horizon right

Surely not.  The original (AS17-137-20910) can still be found in the Apollo 17 Image Library (compare to AS17-137-20911).  From Jack Schmitt's commentary on their work at Station 2 on the 2nd EVA:

Boulder 2 was up on the slope and was about head high. We got a series of four or five samples, I think, and, as we'll hear described, we got a soil sample from a permanently shadowed place underneath an overhang.

Not suggesting the commenter is a hoaxer, but this does present yet another opportunity to direct your attention to Clavius.org (specifically the section on photography).

As for the post's title, that was the wakeup music for the morning of EVA-2:

136:55:05 (Music: "Ride of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner)

[Jack Schmitt (Dabney '57) and Gordon Fullerton (Fleming '57) were both undergraduates at the California Institute of Technology. At 7:00 a.m. on the mornings of Caltech final examinations, it was traditional for students with hi-fi systems to tie them together and wake up everybody in the undergraduate dorms by playing "The Ride" at full volume. For those - including your editor (Blacker '66) - who have been through the experience, the sound always gets the blood pumping no matter how little sleep they've had the night before.]

136:56:39 Fullerton: Good morning, Challenger.

136:56:43 Schmitt: Sounded like Parker had the duty (of picking the wake-up music). Both monumental and epic.

[Bob Parker was a married graduate student at Caltech and lived off-campus. Playing "The Ride" was strictly an undergraduate phenomenon and, for Bob, the Ride wouldn't have had the same significance as it did for Jack. In a February 1992 telephone conversation, Bob said that, if it was he who picked the piece, it was simply because he likes Wagner and can think of few things more stirring than the Ride. He also says that, in the Apollo era, the wake-up music was usually picked the night before and that they sometimes had trouble finding a recording in time.]

136:56:50 Fullerton: Jack, that's supposed to take you back to Caltech final's week.

[In a separate telephone conversation, Fullerton said that he is certain that the idea of playing the Ride was not his. He noted that there were plenty of Caltech people around and that any one of them might have come up with the idea.]

136:57:01 Schmitt: (Humming) (Long Pause) How's everything look, Gordy?

[Journal Contributor Danny Ross Lunsford tells us that the tune Jack is humming is from the third movement of Chopin's 2nd piano sonata in B-flat minor, op. 35.]

You might recognize what Jack was humming, too.  Nothing like a little classical music¹ on the moon...

1 - A bit of a joke.  Dunno why, but From the Earth to the Moon used that track instead of Wagner, while still connecting it to Jack's alma mater.  NASA has, however, used songs by The Byrds a few times, including on 4 September, 1984, during STS-41-D (Judith Resnik's first flight).