posted 05-15-2012 02:27 PM               

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.

Michael Benson, a writer, filmmaker, and photographer, is widely recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on astronomical imagery. His book Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle was heralded in the New York Times as an extraordinary achievement: "If you don't have your own Hubble Space Telescope, this book is the next best thing." He lives in New York City.

• Hardcover: 208 pages
  
• Publisher: Abrams (October 1, 2012)
  
• ISBN-10: 1419704222
  
• ISBN-13: 978-1419704222