‘Earth+Space’: The Coffee Table Book That’s Out of This World

Earth+Space: Other than the attractive but questionable title (which sometimes wreaks havoc on precise search engine searches), I love this book. I mean, you’ve got space. You’ve got photography. And I’m pretty sure there are very few people out there who do astrophotography better than NASA. I mean, how many space telescopes do you have?

With a preface from Bill Nye (the Science Guy, don’tcha know), Earth+Space begins with several photos of Earth from space, including a beautiful nighttime shot. Then it quickly turns its cameras in the other direction, pointing us toward other planets and moons in the solar system, and then out to galaxies, comets, nebulae, brown dwarfs, various other space phenomena, and, one of my favorite things to say, globular clusters. As you move through the book, you get farther and farther away from Earth. Though the distance increases, the beauty does not decrease. NASA’s technology is second to none, and can get clear, detailed, intricate photos of objects far, far away. It also takes us back in time, as we see far away objects as they were many, many years ago.

The book has a bit of text in its front matter, but the vast majority of it is devoted to the photos from NASA and their descriptions. It takes you on a full-color tour of the observable universe, stopping by popular (and many lesser known) sights. Each photo is accompanied by a detailed description of what you’re seeing, and more about the featured object.

Not a definitive text but a beautiful book to page through and admire the universe, it’s a wonderful (literally and figuratively) tour of the sky above, with a small bit devoted to seeing the land down here.

Earth+Space (or Earth and Space, if you will) comes out on October 13. It’s an informative, beautiful, and enjoyable book about the objects in the universe, conveniently packaged for anyone’s enjoyment. Read it cover to cover, or jump to a specific page. I recommend this book to astronomy and astrophotography lovers anywhere.

GeekMom received this item for review purposes.