Picture This!

Astronomical concepts can betruly hard to comprehend, especially those of planetary sizes and distances from Earth and from each other. These concepts are made more comprehensible by the group of illustrations in this book, whichput scale extraterrestrial objects side by side with objects on Earth we can more easily relate to.For example, study the pictures of Earth floating above Jupiter's Great Red Spotand the asteroid Itokawa resting beside Toronto's CN Tower. These mind-bending images bring things better into perspective and will help you understand the size and scale ofour Solar System. In later chapters,you will be toldhow close the visionaries of the past came to guessing what today's explorers would find. Astronomer/painter Lucien Rudaux's masterpieces of Mars dust storms anticipated Viking and Mars rover images by nearly a century. Space artist Ludek Pesek envisioned astronauts setting up camp on the lunar surface in scenes hauntingly similar to photos taken by Apollo astronauts decades later. But the real benefit of this work is in better grasping the nature of our universe -- how big it is, now large it is, and how we fit into it.