William Anders obituary

American astronaut who took the celebrated 1968 Earthrise photograph during the Apollo 8 mission to orbit the moon

It may be that the most famous picture from the US space programme is not the shot of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, but the image of Earth, seen rising above the moon's horizon, an image relayed from space on 24 December 1968 by the crew of Apollo 8 - Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders.

It was Anders, who has died aged 90, who snapped the Earthrise" photograph, which was not part of the mission's scheduled protocol. And it was he who read first from the Book of Genesis during their live transmission from lunar orbit that Christmas Eve.