Landscapes of the Solar System

by Aina Bestard, Antonio Hales (Editor), Matthew Clarke (Translator)

“In a stylized, fact-filled overview, Bestard profiles planets, major moons, and dwarf planets, among other entities that make up Earth’s solar system.” – Publishers Weekly

Breathtaking illustrations bring views of different worlds of our Solar System to life in this engaging and accessible book created in conjunction with ALMA, the largest astronomical project in the world.

We live in an amazing planetary system. From the yawning Valles Marineris on Mars and the subsurface ocean hiding beneath the ice crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa, to the eerily Earth-like terrain of Saturn’s moon Titan, the solar system brims with wonders. And let’s not forget the Sun, with its mysteriously hot corona and solar flares.

This book is a trip to the Solar System through marvelous illustrations accompanied by a comprehensive text that helps the reader understand the amazing variety of landscapes within our planetary system. The planetary images and data provided by scientific instruments have contributed to our understanding of how and why planets evolve.

Genres: Nonfiction, Space, Astronomy, Picture Books, Science

69 pages, Hardcover

Published March 7, 2023

About the author

Aina Bestard is an illustrator and fashion designer. She studied and worked at ESDI in Barcelona.

Some of Aina's drawings can be seen at her Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/aina_bestard/

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am rather annoyed and disappointed at only being able to grant Landscapes of the Solar System (which was originally published in Spanish under the title of Paisajes Desconocidos del Sistema Solar and is of course with its 2022 publication date really up-to-date and current regarding the astronomy, regarding the science being featured) but three stars (although yes, I do still quite highly recommend Landscapes of the Solar System). For yes, Aina Bestard's presented artwork for Landscapes of the Solar System, it is absolutely aesthetically brilliant and stunning, with much colourful (albeit sometimes a wee bit too darkly hued for my eyes) visual detail providing a spectacular, imaginative but also realistic accompaniment to and for the presented textual data and information presented in Landscapes of the Solar System by the ALMA (by the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, the biggest radio radio telescope in the world, located in Chile's Atacama Desert) and by astrophysicist Dr. Antonio Hales (translated into English by Matthew Clarke), albeit that yes, I do kind of wish that aside from Bestard's glorious and superbly rendered pictures, there would also in Landscapes of the Solar System be included actual photographs of the sun, the planets, the asteroid belt and the like. Because while I of course (and as already clearly shown) visually totally and utterly adore Aina Bestard's artwork, I personally do kind of want and prefer a combination of both drawn pictures and photographs for Landscapes of the Solar System. And well, regarding the actual textual portions of Landscapes of the Solar System, Dr. Anthony Hales (and the ALMA radio telescope data) feature and present a nicely detailed introduction to basically every part of our solar system, from its place in the universe and in the Milky Way galaxy, to the sun, the individual (now eight) planets, why Pluto's status as ninth planet changed to being a dwarf planet in 2006 (with much both numerical and verbal current and as such also not dated information), simply but informatively and above all scientifically penned and suitable for young readers from about the age of eight or so onwards but in my opinion for anyone wanting a basic and scientifically sound, academically straight-forward account regarding the solar system and where there is also no textual silliness and/or forced humour and authorial chattiness ever being encountered but only interesting and enlightening details on the solar system and on the aptly named diverse, intriguing and fascinating Landscapes of the Solar System.

But as much as the combination of text and images for Landscapes of the Solar System has been pretty much five stars for me (and yes, even with the absence of photographs), that there is no bibliography provided in Landscapes of the Universe with titles (with books, websites etc.) for further reading and study, well, this does majorly annoy and infuriate me (and enough so to lower my rating for Landscapes of the Solar System to only three stars). Because honestly, considering that Landscapes of the Solar System is entirely non-fiction and as such totally scientific in scope and nature, I personally do find the non inclusion of secondary sources rather hugely academically problematic and seriously reducing the supplemental research and thus also the educational value of Landscapes of the Solar System (and no, simply mentioning the ALMA telescope is for me not sufficient by any stretch of my imagination), and not to mention that an astrophysicist with a PhD like Dr. Antonio Hales should certainly and definitely know better than to not provide academic sources for a presented text. And while I still do think that Landscapes of the Solar System is a very decent and also a nicely scientifically sound textual introduction to our solar system, the absence of bibliographical materials is for me a major and a hugely problematic oversight and faux pas.

[AlenGarou · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Mi serviva un altro libro sullo spazio? No.
L’ho comprato comunque? Sì.
Me ne pento? Assolutamente no!
Anche se… ammetto che avrei voluto vedere più “paesaggi”, invece delle classiche schede dei vari corpi celesti. Ma lasciatemelo dire, la cura nei dettagli c’è tutta.
Essendo pensato per un pubblico giovane, non si dilunga in chissà quali spiegazioni, ma per lo meno i dati numerici ci sono tutti, così come il senso in scala della distanza e delle dimensioni dei soggetti presi in esame.
E non solo! È raro che al giorno d’oggi un libro illustrato sia elaborato con la tecnica d’incisione, per cui sono rimasta davvero sorpresa nel scoprire come sono state create le illustrazioni presenti, per non parlare delle pagine sovrapposte. Un tocco di classe magnifico.
Valida new entry nella mia collezione, lo consiglio a tutti gli amanti dello spazio come la sottoscritta. Non narrerà nulla di particolare, ma visivamente è molto appagante.
Adatto a tutti.

[Willienda Dam · Rating 5 out of 5]

In het Nederlands gelezen. (Reis door het zonnestelsel- De onbegrensde wereld buiten de onze).
Lees het samen met mijn dochter, kijk, lees opnieuw!
Prachtige illustraties en fijne beknopte informatie.
Zeker een aanrader

[Fifi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Artistical imagery and interesting scientific facts combined. Beautiful.

[Catalina Concha · Rating 5 out of 5]

alucinante, la humanidad es hija de la evolucion, un pequeño eslabon de esta, y este hermoso libro objeto así lo demuestra

[Olga Y. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read the Russian version of the book. Absolutely mind boggling visual presentation of our Solar system. Yes, it’s just short crispy facts about each celestial body and not for geeks but it’s served its purpose personally for me in 1) resurfacing what I knew here and there long time ago 2) spiking my interest to read more books on the subject 3) pondering over illustrations is pure visual aesthetics, science embodied in art. I highly recommend this book to those in search of inspiration. You’ll get plenty. Big thanks to the author for helping expand the horizon of thinking and recalibrating problems and ego-centered behaviors when realizing that the scale is indeed immense. And last but not the least: great things take time.

[Elisabetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dubiterò di chiunque mi dica che questo libro non è stupendo