Not all astronomers are totally thrilled with the Hubble Space Telescope. "That's not data, it's pictures," they complain. But what pictures: never has the universe seemed so gorgeous, powerful, diverse: in a word, magnificent. Only part of the pictures in Ken Croswell's Magnificent Universe are from the Hubble, but all cleave to the same high standard. Whether of Mars, a supernova, or galaxies in collision, they are beautiful. The paper in the book is glossy black, which is ideal for bringing out colors and details in the photographs, each of which covers an entire very large page.....

A decade in the making, this book is based on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with each of the twenty-four moon voyagers, as well as those who contributed their brain power, training and teamwork on Earth. In his preface Chaikin writes, "We touched the face of another world and became a people without limits."     What follows are thrilling accounts of such remarkable experiences as the rush of a liftoff, the heart-stopping touchdown on the moon, the final hurdle of re-entry, competition for a seat on a moon flight, the tragic spacecraft fire, and the search for clues to the origin of the solar system on the slopes of lunar mountains.

As Oliver Morton shows in his superb new book, Mapping Mars, Mars has clouds, winds, and shorelines. It has river valleys, mountains, volcanoes, and even glaciers. Even were it lifeless, it could support life, albeit of an almost unimaginably marginal kind. What Mars lacks is places. There are no "theres" there, nor will there be--until our feet make an impact on its soil...

THE ULTIMATE, AUTHORITATIVE, UP-TO-DATE CD-ROM SOURCE FOR MARS ENTHUSIASTS! This unique electronic book has an outstanding collection of the finest colorful educational overviews to highly technical NASA internal program documents - provide 12,681 pages of invaluable material. There are 550 color images, 400 black and white illustrations, and 2400 drawings, schematics, tables and charts. From the original Mariner missions through the recent loss of Mars Climate Orbiter, and looking ahead to sample return and human missions, every significant exploration topic is included. There are a dozen exclusive reproductions of rare or out-of-print historic NASA documents. You'll also find an exclusive 450-page catalog of every named feature on Mars. Eight galleries of photographs and images provide a stunning view of this amazing planet - with HST, Viking, Pathfinder, and MGS photos. Over 600 megabytes of quality information!

On Mars the sky is pink, the polar caps are made of dry ice, the volcanoes are 17 miles high, and there is a little rock named Lozenge. Paul Raeburn's new book about Mars is full of fun facts like these. Published by the National Geographic Society, this volume also features 125 striking photographs of the planet's surface, many of them from the 1997 Pathfinder mission. A pair of 3-D glasses are tucked into the cover so that the foldout "Marscape" in the middle of the book practically leaps off the page.....Raeburn describes each Mars mission, profiles several of the major players in Mars research, and discusses future exploration of the planet.....

.....From outer space to deep prehistory, from ancient Egypt to the planet Mars, the conclusions in Martian Genesis will astound you.....At last, science writer Herbie Brennan provides answers to the questions that have confounded scientists for years--including a startling solution to the mystery surrounding the rock face found on Mars. His carefully researched, impeccably documented conclusions may change history forever.....