Visions of Mars

Both tantalizingly similar to and eerily different from our planet, Mars has fascinated the scientific mind and the popular imagination for hundreds of years. Thanks to robotic exploration missions by NASA over the past 20 years, we now have an increasingly sophisticated understanding of our neighboring planet, and a multitude of images to help fill out the portrait. In Visions of Mars space imaging specialist Olivier de Goursac takes us on an extraordinary visual tour of Mars through a selection of dazzling photographs, which he has processed to an unprecedented level of realism and detail. This amazing group of images, almost all previously unpublished, captures vast sandy plains, ancient lakes, deep canyons, the highest mountains in the solar system, polar ice caps, and other remarkable aspects of the planet's dramatic landscape. The book also includes a summary of the data that has been gathered about the planet up to this time. An awe-inspiring book, Visions of Mars is sure to be both an education and a revelation for all. Author Bio: Olivier de Goursac is a space imaging specialist who has worked with NASA/JPL's Mars mission scientists since the Viking missions of the 1980s. Today, he generates superb Mars images from his home base near Paris. He is a coauthor of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Space and a contributor to Le Figaro, the major French weekly. James B. Garvin is a Mars specialist who has just been named Chief Scientist of NASA, which he joined in 1984.