Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Harry N. Abrams (2005), 160 pages
Description
Visions of Mars offers a visual tour of the main geographic features of Mars as they have been recorded by twenty years of remote-sensing missions, ranging from the Viking orbiter/lander of the late 1970s through the Pathfinder orbiter/rover of the mid-1990s and up to the twin rover missions of today. The survey is driven by images, many of which have never been seen before, which introduce the reader to the plains, volcanoes, chasms, lake beds, and polar regions of the red planet. A final section summarizes the basic data that have been gathered about the planet, comparing Earth and Mars.
User reviews
LibraryThing member readermom
Dissatisfied with the little pictures you see from the Mars Rovers? This book will solve that problem.
The pictures are beautiful. It is really cool to see pictures in such clarity from another planet. The book also discusses the environment there, what the landers have done to analyse things and
Then there is this sentence, from the forward, "Today we know Mars harbors a vast reservoir of modern water as ice within its polar caps and within its high-latitude soil." Exactly what is "modern" water? None of this old-fashioned H20 for us, we have Modern Water for our astronauts!
I did feel, towards the end of the book, that all you need to do is add a couple of scrubby juniper trees and clumps of cheat grass and you could be looking at the area around Moab. Of course, with the odd atmosphere, you get some cool visual effects, like blue light halos around the sun. We don't get those here. The size of the formations is incredible too. The giant volcano Olympus Mons is 69,882 ft high. Everest is just a tiny fraction of that.
I just wonder about the tone of absolute knowledge that comes across in the text. While the pictures are amazing, I don't think we have the level of certainty that the author claims. But it is fun to speculate.
This book would be a good companion to the fiction book Red Mars I read a while back. You could almost track the actions of the characters across the pictures in Visions of Mars. I love these books, that let you see up close all the pictures NASA and other agencies are spending so much time and money to get.
The pictures are beautiful. It is really cool to see pictures in such clarity from another planet. The book also discusses the environment there, what the landers have done to analyse things and
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little fact gems that I didn't know before. For instance, the soil of Mars has a high percentage of a magnetic iron ore, so the soil though completely dry, acts like wet sand.Then there is this sentence, from the forward, "Today we know Mars harbors a vast reservoir of modern water as ice within its polar caps and within its high-latitude soil." Exactly what is "modern" water? None of this old-fashioned H20 for us, we have Modern Water for our astronauts!
I did feel, towards the end of the book, that all you need to do is add a couple of scrubby juniper trees and clumps of cheat grass and you could be looking at the area around Moab. Of course, with the odd atmosphere, you get some cool visual effects, like blue light halos around the sun. We don't get those here. The size of the formations is incredible too. The giant volcano Olympus Mons is 69,882 ft high. Everest is just a tiny fraction of that.
I just wonder about the tone of absolute knowledge that comes across in the text. While the pictures are amazing, I don't think we have the level of certainty that the author claims. But it is fun to speculate.
This book would be a good companion to the fiction book Red Mars I read a while back. You could almost track the actions of the characters across the pictures in Visions of Mars. I love these books, that let you see up close all the pictures NASA and other agencies are spending so much time and money to get.
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Language
Original language
English
ISBN
0810992108 / 9780810992108