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Overview
In Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle, author and filmmaker Michael Benson assembles an outstanding collection of astronomical images from observatories around the world and in space. We live in a golden age of astronomical observation. Some of the resulting images are well known and have inspired millions of people; others, equally breathtaking, have never been published before. For this book, Benson has culled the very best, and organized them into a thrilling journey through space and time to the universe's great places, ranging from "nearby" nebulae in our own Milky Way galaxy to the light of the Hubble Deep Field that has traveled billions of light-years. Every bit as innovative and beautiful as the author's successful Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes but far grander in conception, Far Out is an inspiring work of art and science on the cutting edge of human perception.A Guide to the Cosmos, in Words and Images Dazzling and True –New York Times Book Review
[With Far Out] Take a good long look into space-time. –Los Angeles Times
Far out by Michael Benson proves that putting the photographable universe into a book doesn’t dampen its beauty. – Men’s Journal
An exquisite picture book of outer space. –San Diego Union Tribune
“2001: A Space Odyssey and Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle: both are inspirational moving pictures. Far Out punches deep into space, like a series of jump cuts. It is a truly cinematic experience to see these magnificent images in rapid succession. Like the Star-Child in Stanley Kubrick’s vision of a Mankind evolving to a higher level, Far Out inspires me again to imagine a Universe filled with life, and each of those billions of pinpoints being orbited by worlds and beings of breathtaking beauty. Very moving pictures.”
—Douglas Trumbull, Oscar-winning Visual Effects Supervisor, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Trek, The Motion Picture
“The inventive, imaginative Michael Benson here unfolds the universe in its multiple dimensions.”
—Dava Sobel, author of Longitude, Galileo’s Daughter, and The Planets
“That the images in Michael Benson’s latest book, Far Out, are completely mind-blowing goes without saying. What’s especially dazzling about this volume, though, is the way Benson’s text takes the shards of those blown minds and completely reconfigures them into such a startlingly new and fresh awareness: a trembling awe all its own.”
—Lawrence Weschler, author of Everything That Rises and Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
“First he gave us the beauty of our solar system’s neighbor worlds in Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, but Michael Benson hasn’t stopped there. In this spectacular new offering he gives us the universe itself, presented in such stunning and vivid detail that I am awed by every page. Open this book, take the journey, and be amazed.”
—Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon and A Passion for Mars
Synopsis
In Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle, author and filmmaker Michael Benson assembles an outstanding collection of astronomical images from observatories around the world and in space. We live in a golden age of astronomical observation. Some of the resulting images are well known and have inspired millions of people; others, equally breathtaking, have never been published before. For this book, Benson has culled the very best, and organized them into a thrilling journey through space and time to the universe's great places, ranging from "nearby" nebulae in our own Milky Way galaxy to the light of the Hubble Deep Field that has traveled billions of light-years.
Every bit as innovative and beautiful as the author's successful Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes but far grander in conception, Far Out is an inspiring work of art and science on the cutting edge of human perception.
A Guide to the Cosmos, in Words and Images Dazzling and True –New York Times Book Review
[With Far Out] Take a good long look into space-time. –Los Angeles Times
Far out by Michael Benson proves that putting the photographable universe into a book doesn’t dampen its beauty. – Men’s Journal
An exquisite picture book of outer space. –San Diego Union Tribune
“2001: A Space Odyssey and Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle: both are inspirational moving pictures. Far Out punches deep into space, like a series of jump cuts. It is a truly cinematic experience to see these magnificent images in rapid succession. Like the Star-Child in Stanley Kubrick’s vision of a Mankind evolving to a higher level, Far Out inspires me again to imagine a Universe filled with life, and each of those billions of pinpoints being orbited by worlds and beings of breathtaking beauty. Very moving pictures.”
—Douglas Trumbull, Oscar-winning Visual Effects Supervisor, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Trek, The Motion Picture
“The inventive, imaginative Michael Benson here unfolds the universe in its multiple dimensions.”
—Dava Sobel, author of Longitude, Galileo’s Daughter, and The Planets
“That the images in Michael Benson’s latest book, Far Out, are completely mind-blowing goes without saying. What’s especially dazzling about this volume, though, is the way Benson’s text takes the shards of those blown minds and completely reconfigures them into such a startlingly new and fresh awareness: a trembling awe all its own.”
—Lawrence Weschler, author of Everything That Rises and Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
“First he gave us the beauty of our solar system’s neighbor worlds in Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, but Michael Benson hasn’t stopped there. In this spectacular new offering he gives us the universe itself, presented in such stunning and vivid detail that I am awed by every page. Open this book, take the journey, and be amazed.”
—Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon and A Passion for Mars
Publishers Weekly
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.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
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.)Dennis Overbye
If you don’t have your own Hubble Space Telescope, this book is the next best thing.... You can sit and look through this book for hours and never be bored by the shapes, colors and textures into which cosmic creation can arrange itself, or you can actually read the accompanying learned essays. Mr. Benson’s prose is up to its visual surroundings, no mean feat.—The New York Times