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'Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes'

<i>Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes</i>, by Michael Benson
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Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, by Michael Benson

Trawling through the Internet from his home in Slovenia, author Michael Benson stumbled upon some of the most expensive pictures ever taken: Otherworldly images sent back by the spacecraft humankind has launched over the past four decades in an effort to capture the heavens.

In a new book, Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, Benson collects nearly 300 of these photographs, snapped over an area of nearly 3 billion miles. The vistas are strange and beautiful -- from the fiery arcing prominences of the sun to the celestial dance of Io floating above Jupiter. NPR's Scott Simon talks with Benson about the book, which he calls a collection of "landscape" photography.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Scott Simon is the host of Weekend Edition Saturday and is one of the hosts of NPR's morning news podcast Up First.