Journalist, filmmaker and photographer Benson follows his book Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes
with an even more stellar array of astronomical photographs that offer glorious views of space, moving successively from close to home to the outermost regions of the universe, moving simultaneously farther from Earth and farther back in time. Benson’s emphasis on the correlation between geological time and astronomical distance sets this book far apart from others. Light rays, he says, move “like ripples in a pond... so vast that the ripples extending out from each event take thousands, millions, or even billions of years to echo off its banks.” Light reaching Earth now from the Witch Head nebula, some 740 light-years distant, was generated in the 14th century. Elsewhere, remote galactic clusters, “aggregate bonfires shining across the blackness of deep time,” cast light as old as Pangaea, the Earth’s ancient supercontinent, which broke up to create today’s continents. Benson illuminates the vast scale of the universe and its workings with large-scale “quasi-cinematic” photos that reveal scintillating stars, galaxies and Rorschach-like nebulae in their “true” colors. The 228 color photos are spectacular and enhanced with three eight-page gatefolds. (Nov.)
