Book Review: "Planetfall" by Michael Benson

By Nancy Atkinson - October 22, 2012 at 1:19 PM UTC | Site News
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Review written by Lois Merritt

Armchair astronomer alert! If you love looking at the images sent back by the spacecraft traveling throughout our solar system,

Planetfall

by Michael Benson is truly an amazing book, with extra-amazing pictures. The large 15 X 12 inch pages provide great, eye-popping views of some of the most spectacular images of the planets, moons, and other bodies that make up our cosmic neighborhood. Benson has a knack for picking out the 'best of the best' from our interplanetary robotic photographers.

Each section of the book starts off with an introduction, a brief look at the area of the solar system involved in that chapter, and the probes that visited them. At the end of the book, there are full captions of each picture, including complete descriptions of what it is you are looking at and what spacecraft took it. The sections are: Earth and the Moon, The Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the Asteroids and Comets.

The pictures come from the the latest landers and probes that have launched since the start of the 21st century. This includes Spirit and Opportunity, Cassini, Messenger, Aqua, the ISS crews, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Solar Dynamics Observatory, among others. A space enthusiast might be familiar with some of these pictures from seeing them online, but to have them bound in a large size book, where they can be examined closely, and even pulled out in some cases, is one of the things I love about this book.

The images were compiled by Michael Benson, a writer, filmmaker, and photographer, who is no stranger to astronomical imagery. His previous books include book

Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle

, and

Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes

, which include images from previous spacecraft and ground-based observatories.

On a personal note, the Mars section was my total and utter favorite, especially given the lot of super pictures from the rovers. However, I could be a bit biased on that, given Mars has always been my favorite...

This is a great collection of images, and paging through the book is a perfect way to transport yourself whenever you need to get away from it all.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com