The Grand Tour: A Traveler's Guide to the Solar System

Anyone with a little extra cash and a plane ticket can take a â grand tourâ of Europe. But a tour of the Solar System? Now thatâ s an experience deserving of the word grand. Introducing the new edition of the book praised as â spectacularâ (London Times), â eye-bogglingâ (Future Life),â concise and informative . . . the colorful and imaginative paintings steal the showâ (Chicago Tribune), with â page after page filled with new color paintings, each the well-controlled evocation of a spectacular sceneâ (Scientific American).Originally published in 1981 and revised in 1993, The Grand Tour, an astronomy classic with 196,000 copies in print, takes readers on an imaginative trip through every corner of the solar system, in much the same way as Cookâ s once took travelers on a grand tour of the Continent.

Completely updated and revised and drawing on discoveries made by Voyager I and II, Magellan, Galileo, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Mars Global Surveyor Mission and other space initiatives, The Grand Tour is a dazzling journey that combines lush art and up-to-the-minute science. One hundred new paintings give travelers an unprecedented view of phenomena such as Saturnâ s rings from Saturn itself; the rusty-red dune fields of Mars; the rugged surface of Mercury, saturated with impact craters; and the Kuiper Belt of planetesimals, the largest of which is Plutoâ now considered a half-planet. From the vast reaches of Jupiter to tiny frozen Rhea, like a snowball orbiting around Saturn, it is a journey of astonishing proportions.

A DAZZLING JOURNEY

The trunks are packed, your passport's in order. But instead of sailing to Le Havre for a Cook's tour of the Continent, you're embarking on a voyage through the solar system. That is the wonder of THE GRAND TOUR.

Originally published in 1981 and now completely updated by the scientific findings of the past decade, the revised edition of THE GRAND TOUR includes 10 new chapters, 52 new and/or revised paintings, 24 new photographs, and new drawings and maps. Through its unique marriage of art and fact, the book transports readers to unimaginable places-worlds of pure ice and utter night, of volcanic tumult and swirling acid clouds, of deep cut canyons and startingly beautiful vistas. From the vast reaches of Jupiter to tiny frozen Rhea, orbiting like a snowball around Saturn, it takes us on a journey of astonishing proportions.

Astronomer William K. Hartmann is internationally known as a planetary scientist, painter, and writer. Ron Miller, a former director of the Albert Einstein Spacearium at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., is widely known for his astronomical and science-fiction paintings. Their other collaborations include Out of the Cradle, Cycles of Fire, and The History of Earth.