I was fortunate to catch a smaller version of the exhibit, "The Smithsonian Presents: BEYOND, Visions of Planetary Landscapes", at the Petaluma Museum a couple weeks ago. The photos blew me away, and I immediately went on-line to see if I could find more.
What I found was this book, by Michael Benson, who is behind the digital processing that created the photos in the exhibit and the book. Digital processing is needed because these photos are created from montages of the many individual satellite photos needed to cover a large area. I decided to spring for the hardcover version of this book, and am glad I did. There are several fold-out images, and the quality of a hardback was worth it.
I was ready for a coffee-table book with great photos. What surprised, me, though, was how much I enjoyed the accompanying text. The photographic images are first and foremost in this book, but this is also great reading! For example, here's the beginning of the chapter on the planet Venus: "We shouldn't read too much into the fact that Venus, nominally the planet of love, was revealed by squadrons of Soviet and American probes in the 1970s to be a broiling hell, with a 900 degree Fahrenheit surface temperature hotter even than Mercury's and an atmosphere busy drizzling such Valentines Day surprises as sulfuric acid. Far more interesting is the fact that the surface of this inferno - a place where the rocks glow: a place as pressurizd as a submarine trench - was revealed to be so incomparably beautiful by the unwinking radar eye of the early 1990s Magellan probe."
As mentioned, each image is the result of digitally combining, with the greatest care, the multiple images from the various probes. This is even harder than it sounds, because a finished photo, covering any great geographic distance, is the combination of many different passes of the satellite, as it continually orbits the planet taking photos of a slightly different longitude each time.
Many of the photos are black & white, but there are also spectacular color photos. Benson explains that, as much as possible, he reflected only "true" colors. Neptune, for example, is really blue, just as Mars is really red. The only exception to this are the photos of the sun itself. Obviously, the "true" color of the sun is simply bright white light. What Benson gives us, though, are photos taken in wavelengths that can't be seen by the naked eye. They give us a sun with a varying roiling incredible surface, where the cooler areas (those only 6000 degrees or so) are darker than the rest.
This book has many more photos than were shown in the exhibit I saw, but, on the other hand is missing one of the most arresting. This was a view of Saturn, showing the rings exactly side-on. The depth of the rings is so narrow, compared to the planet they circle, that in the black & white photo, the rings were reduced to a thin white line in front of the planet. It looked like a crease in the paper or an optical mistake! I was fascinated.
This book was published in 2003 and still counts Pluto as a planet. It doesn't make any difference, because no probe had ever been sent to Pluto, anyway. That will hopefully change, in a far distant edition. The U.S. launched the First Pluto Space Mission in January 2006. Unfortunately, the probe won't reach Pluto until 2014 at the earliest.
If you can get to the Smithsonian exhibit, I highly recommend it. There are oversized 3-5 feet high photos that are wonderful, and this book is the perfect accompaniment.
Happy Reader
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Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2011
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S P Mead
Beautiful images
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 27, 2016Verified Purchase
WJ FOX
A simply amazing and beautiful collection of images
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Beautiful :)
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 19, 2009Verified Purchase
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Luis Miguel Pascual Gomez
Libro en muy buen estado.
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