Common Themes

Postcards From Mars: The First Photographer on the Red Planet is another amazing book I look forward to having on my shelf. The author is the lead scientist for the color imaging from Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and has this to say in the preface:

My goal in this book is to share the beauty, desolation, grandeur, and sometimes plain old alien strangeness of the [fourth planet from the Sun] Mars, that has been revealed to us through the [Mars Exploratory] Rover [MER] cameras. In editing the enormous number of photographs we’ve taken down to 150 or so [of the best images] included here, I chose images that were representative of different phases of each rover’s journey, and of major scientific successes (or occasionally disappointments) along the way. I’ve included some of the history and the stories behind the [MER] mission [in the text that accompanies the images] and the pictures as well.

Definitely one to pick up, if only to thumb through as you read The Martian Chronicles.

Nothing packs quite the punch of a spectacular image from space, and Saturn: A New View is chock full of them. Featuring some of the very newest Cassini images, I can’t wait to pick this up. I always find new inspiration when thumbing through books like this!

Sometimes the Hubble Site is even more brilliant than the astrophotography they present: holiday greeting cards, featuring images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Eighteen types of cards to choose from, all gorgeous. (I only wish they’d announced them earlier!)

Astronaut Cafe. Photo courtesy of Hunter Freeman, published by Palm Press.

(Stumbling upon this photo, seen on a greeting card, was worth interrupting my otherwise post-less vacation.)