Planetary Vistas

Landscapes only ever imagined before have finally become reality with recent advances in space exploration imaging and this book collects some of the greatest views and vistas of Mars, Venus Titan, Io and more in their full glory, with explanatory background to contextualize the foreign landforms of our Solar System. Here are literally 'other-worldly' visions of strange new scenes, all captured by the latest technology. The book shows and describes planetary landscapes captured from their surface by landing and roving vehicles or by very low-flying spacecraft. There is more than scientific interest in these views. They are also aesthetically beautiful and intriguing and Dr. Murdin convincingly compares cosmic landscapes to terrestrial landscapes in fine art.§§Distant Vistas is a travel book across the planets and moons of the Solar System for armchair space explorers who want to be amazed, who want to taste the future of space tourism, who would like to understand some of what they may see and who appreciate the beauty of fine art. As the technical capacity to take high-quality detailed images from other objects in the Solar System advances in leaps and bounds, at last the best of these images are collected in one place for space enthusiasts.