Overview

For everyone who's ever wondered what the solar system looks like up close, this definitive collection of space exploration will satisfy your curiosity and inspire your imagination. Since the 1960s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been sending unmanned satellites to explore the planets, moons and sun. These probes have amassed a stunning visual record of other worlds, revealing not one but scores of new frontiers, from rust-red Mars to the ethereal rings of Saturn. In ""Beyond"", author Michael Benson has pulled together the most spectacular of these images into one volume that focuses on the awesome appearance of these celestial bodies as well as what the photos actually reveal about the place in simple language children will understand. The book includes a glossary and index.

Full Product Details

9780810983229

Table of Contents

Reviews

This bargain edition of Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes (2003) may lack the double gatefolds, more than half of the pictures and the Arthur C. Clarke introduction, but it does still offer a mesmerizing grand tour of solar-system high spots. Gathered with the premise that they are significant achievements in the history of not just science, but photography as well, these big, sharply detailed images were all taken by (specified) space probes and were chosen for their visual impact. Arranged roughly in the order in which they were taken, the photos range from a primitive 1967 composite shot of the Moon to haunting close-up views of mysterious Neptune and its moon Triton taken by Voyager 2 in 1989. Benson includes several asteroids, but not comets or dwarf planets because, he claims, decent photos of these do not yet exist. Except where they descend into outright error (Venus is not by far the hottest place in the solar system ), the accompanying text and captions just rehash commonly available facts, but our nearest neighbors in space have never looked better. (glossary, notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14) (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Michael Benson is a journalist and maker of documentary films, including the award-winning Predictions of Fire (1995). His work has been published in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and The Nation, among other publications and he has been a television (CNN) and radio (NPR) reporter.

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