Space
Photography
Orbit:
NASA Astronauts Photograph the Earth
Shuttle astronaut Jay Apt, together with scientists Michael
Helfert and Justin Wilkinson, has put together a wonderful
book of photographs under the auspices of National Geographic,
Orbit. These are all photographs taken by astronauts from
the space shuttle while in orbit, with a few exceptions, historically
significant photographs from moon circlings and early trips
into space. Photography, interestingly enough, is never really
scheduled as a shuttle activity, but rather done in between
the other assignments. The photographs included in this book
do not come from special space cameras, but rather from regular
hand-held, off-the-shelf cameras that astronauts took with
them. The shuttle offers a unique platform for photography,
to say the least. It has 11 different windows, and as the
shuttle orbits in what one might consider an upside-down position,
the windows and cargo-bay with doors open are almost always
facing the earth. Astronauts take lots of film with them,
and record many phenomena. This book is divided geographically,
by earth region: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, Asia,
the Pacific, Middle and South America, and North America.
There is also a special section on the Aurora, with dazzling
photographs of things that look right out of Star Trek! The
images include daytime and nighttime views, calm views and
stormy views. One can see hurricanes and cyclones from high
above, stretching their entire lengths across great portions
of the globe. One can see the difference lighting makes in
an urban area at night, the way terrain and human-engineering
connect, and how much of the world seems to remain unspoilt
when viewed from a distance of even a few hundred miles away.
This is a remarkable book, full of glorious photographs of
the 'home world', a great coffee-table book, a great gift,
and a great guide of inspiration for younger readers who might
be interested in science, geography, or even becoming an astronaut.
Space
Photography.
Beyond:
Visions of the Interplanetary Probes
Michael Benson has spent years compiling images collected
by the unmanned probes that NASA has been sending into space
to explore the solar system since the 1960s. The resulting
book consists of two parts: the first is a visual tour of
the solar system; and the second is a series of essays that
explain the how and why of these photographs - the history
of the journeys of the probes, how they work and why they
were built. The volume has a foreword by Sir Arthur C. Clarke
and an afterword by Lawrence Weschler.
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