Planetfall: New Solar System Visions: New Solar System Visions

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 Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, 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 Planetfall, a truly revelatory book that uses its large page size to reproduce the greatest achievements in contemporary planetary photography as never before.

Praise for Planetfall:

“All retrospectives, art and otherwise, should shock us awake the way this one does . . . Planetfall 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.” —The New York Times

“This is the way I like to tour the solar system. Find a chair. Sit. Turn some pages. Gaze. Wonder.” —NPR.com

“Beautiful interplanetary images.” —MSNBC.com

“Beautiful visions of what’s out there.” —The Huffington Post

“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