Otherworlds Michael Benson

The awe-inspiring beauty of our solar system is captured in spectacular high resolution detail in Otherworlds. Michael Benson’s groundbreaking photography captures planetary landscapes as they might look if humans could visit them and view them with their own eyes. It is a glimpse of worlds currently beyond our reach. Since the late 1950s, a small squadron of increasingly sophisticated robotic spacecraft have voyaged to worlds not visited by humans. The scientific data and imagery captured on these missions is painstakingly assembled by Benson to create seamless composite images of planets, moons and stars in our solar system. From the first colour portrait of the moon and a very rare morning frost on Mars, to the spectacularly radiant central star that lights it all, the many worlds within which the Earth turns become vividly real.

This book was published to coincide with the artist's solo exhibition at the Natural History Museum in 2016, and is a visual legacy of over five decades of planetary exploration.