Planetfall: New Solar System Visions: New Solar System Visions

Planetfall: New Solar System Visions: New Solar System Visions

<DIV>Thanks to the photographic output of a small squadron of interplanetary spacecraft, we have awakened to the beauty and splendor of the solar system. Since Michael Benson’s masterful book <I>Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes</i>, new, more powerful cameras in probes with greatly improved maneuverability have traversed the wheeling satellites of Jupiter; roamed the boulder-strewn red deserts of Mars; studied Saturn’s immaculate rings; and shown us our own ravishing Earth, a blue-white orb with a disturbingly thin atmosphere, as it plunges deeper into ecological crisis. These new images are the subject of Benson’s <I>Planetfall</i>, a truly revelatory book that uses its large page size to reproduce the greatest achievements in contemporary planetary photography as never before.<BR><BR>Praise for <I>Planetfall</i>:<BR><BR>“All retrospectives, art and otherwise, should shock us awake the way this one does . . . <I>Planetfall</i> is a book of science through and through, but it also deepens our sense of the miracle and the mystery of the universe, of our eye-blink lives.” —<I>The New York Times</i><BR><BR>“This is the way I like to tour the solar system. Find a chair. Sit. Turn some pages. Gaze. Wonder.” —NPR.com<BR><BR>“Beautiful interplanetary images.” —MSNBC.com <BR><BR>“Beautiful visions of what’s out there.” —<I>The Huffington Post</i><BR><BR>“To encounter a Benson landscape is to be in awe of not only how he sees the universe, but also the ways in which he composes the never-ending celestial ballet.” —Time.com <BR><BR></div>