![<i>Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes</i>, by Michael Benson](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/5482beb/2147483647/strip/true/crop/140x140+0+0/resize/880x880!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.npr.org%2Fprograms%2Fwesat%2Ffeatures%2F2003%2Foct%2Fbeyond%2Fbook-f097289199726b766845c561cce829958a40b393.jpg)
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Trawling through the Internet from his home in Slovenia, author Michael Benson stumbled upon some of the most expensive pictures ever taken: Otherworldly images sent back by the spacecraft humankind has launched over the past four decades in an effort to capture the heavens.
In a new book, Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, Benson collects nearly 300 of these photographs, snapped over an area of nearly 3 billion miles. The vistas are strange and beautiful -- from the fiery arcing prominences of the sun to the celestial dance of Io floating above Jupiter. NPR's Scott Simon talks with Benson about the book, which he calls a collection of "landscape" photography.
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