Slideshow: Planetfall: Snapshots from the solar system

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Michael Benson / Kinetikon Pictures

See some of our solar system's greatest sights, as captured in "Planetfall: New Solar System Visions," a large-format book by Michael Benson.

Launch slideshow

Spacecraft engineers may not think of themselves as artists, but in the right hands, the fruit of their labors can be as artistic and as revolutionary as Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical sketches — as evidenced by the stunning views on display in Michael Benson's "Planetfall: New Solar System Visions."

"It's an amazing thing that in the last 50 years, we have expanded the realm that's accessible to us either directly or indirectly as a species," Benson told me. "As a result, we have a new chapter in image-making and photography. In a way, this brings science and art together, as it was in the Renaissance."

"Planetfall" presents more than 120 images of solar system bodies ranging from our own home world to the sun and moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and asteroids and comets — all in a whopping 12-by-15-inch (30-by-38-centimeter) page format. Some of the photos stretch out over double-folds, triple-folds, even quadruple-folds (which translate into roughly 5-foot-wide panoramas).

To create the photos, Benson went back to the raw data from NASA and European Space Agency missions. "It's a point of pride to build most of these images from the ground up," Benson said.

Benson, a writer/filmmaker/photographer, has done this before. His earlier books, "Beyond" (2003) and "Far Out" (2009), presented imagery from planetary probes and deep-space views, respectively. At first, Benson thought he'd just update the "Beyond" book for a new edition. "But then I thought it would be fun to change the format of the pages, and simply look at 21st-century planetary photography — because we really have had a renaissance of these missions in the past decade," he said.

Making planetfall
For the book's title, Benson used a word that capitalizes on the concept of an explorer making landfall. "Planetfall" is defined as the moment when visual contact is made with a celestial body. Following through on that theme, the book is structured as a series of movie-like journeys — beginning with an establishing shot, then moving in for glorious close-ups.

The section on Mars starts out with a long-range view of the Red Planet from ESA's Rosetta probe during its flyby on the way to a comet encounter. "It's one of the very rare pictures where you see a planet with the Milky Way behind it," Benson said. The point of view zooms in to reveal the terrain as seen from orbit, including a marvelous shot of ground fog lying at the bottom of a Martian canyon, as seen by ESA's Mars Express probe (page 100). Then there's that stunning series of panoramas from NASA's Mars rovers, ending with a blue-tinged sunset as seen by the Opportunity rover.

With only a few exceptions, Benson tries to come as close as he can to the view that human eyes would see, which sometimes requires some tricky image processing. For example, a picture of Saturn's geyser-spewing moon, Enceladus, is based on image data from the Cassini orbiter in infrared, green and ultraviolet wavelengths. Benson said he tweaked the data to come up with a red-green-blue combination (page 187).

"I think I got away with it pretty well," he said. "It makes a very worthy color image. ... To my knowledge, it's the first time that a global portrait of Enceladus has been released where you see the geysers in color."

In addition to the book, which is published by Abrams, Michael Benson is working on a "Planetfall" photo exhibition that will be on view at New York's Hasted Kraeutler Gallery starting in December, and at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington next year.

How scientists see art
So how does Benson's work sit with planetary scientists? "Obviously everybody's worried about the funding [for future planetary missions]. Anything that can get the word out about these missions is good by them," Benson said.

He's also heartened by an endorsement from Paul Geissler, a planetary scientist at the U.S Geological Survey who has collaborated with Benson in the past. "He has an artist's eye, so he sees things differently than a scientist would," Geissler told The Wall Street Journal last year. "I honestly think that he has done as much to support and further solar-system exploration as many scientists who are working in the field."

Benson said he has just as much respect for the scientists who make his artistry possible.

"We have a fantastic chapter in the history of photography that has been brought to us, almost as a side effect of these missions," he told me. "Their primary reason for happening is scientific research, but we also have this opportunity to see what these places look like. I believe we will inevitably end up expanding as a species. It may take longer than the visionaries of the 20th century thought, but I do believe it will end up happening. This is still the opening chapter: We're seeing the end of the beginning of that move."

Update for 5 p.m. ET Oct. 19: I originally wrote that Benson coined the term "Planetfall," but commenters have rightly pointed out that the term has been around in science fiction for quite a while, meaning the interplanetary equivalent of landfall. In fact, it was picked up as the name of a computer game in the 1980s. Benson tweaks the meaning a bit, using it to define a visual discovery rather than an actual landing. I've revised this item accordingly.

More from the art of science:

• Artists capture the spirit of space
• Hubble Space Telescope goes pop
• Artist dreams up a mock Mars mission
• Making music from weather data
• Scientific art contest taken with grain of salt
• Scientific visions that take the prize
• Slideshow: The art of science

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

ESA

This natural-color view of the Danielson and Kalocsa craters and their surroundings in the Arabia Terra region was captured by the High-Resolution Stereo Camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter on June 19, 2011.

In honor of science-fiction legend Ray Bradbury's passing, here's a totally non-fictional Martian chronicle: a picture of two craters on the Red Planet that record how the climate has changed over the course of billions of years.

The photo, sent back by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter and released today, focuses on the Kalocsa and Danielson craters in Mars' Arabia Terra region. Danielson is the larger crater, measuring roughly 38 miles (60 kilometers) across. Kalocsa is smaller (20 miles, or 33 kilometers across) and about a half-mile (1 kilometer) shallower.

The most noticeable features on Danielson's crater floor are the dark, eroded layers of sediments and streamlined hills known as yardangs. In today's photo advisory, ESA's science team explains that the sediments appear to have been cemented by water, possibly from an ancient deep groundwater reservoir, and then were eroded by the wind.

The orientation of the yardangs suggests that strong north-northeasterly winds initially deposited the sediments, and eroded them during a later, drier period of Martian history. Danielson's layers may chronicle fluctuations in the climate of Mars, triggered by changes in the planet's axis of rotation.

In contrast, Kalocsa's crater floor is smooth, with no layered sediments. This may be because the crater is too shallow to have reached the groundwater reservoir, or because the crater was blasted into the Martian surface after the water in the reservoir was lost.

One of Bradbury's best-known books, "The Martian Chronicles," spins tales about the disappearance of an ancient Red Planet civilization. The disappearance of the Red Planet's ancient water is a story worthy of the Ray Bradbury treatment, and fresh chapters of that story are sure to be written after NASA's Mars Science Laboratory lands in Gale Crater in August.

Someday, a crater on Mars may well bear Bradbury's name — but Mars Society President Robert Zubrin had something even grander in mind when he issued a tribute to the author:

"I was saddened today to hear of the death of Ray Bradbury.  I first read Bradbury's 'The Martian Chronicles' when I was in elementary school.  He was one of those who inspired me, and I'm sure millions of others, with the vision of a new world.  While science has since shown nearly all the details of Bradbury's Lowellian Mars to have little relationship to reality, still, I think on a deeper level he was fundamentally right.  The human future need not be limited to the Earth.  It is from imagination that reality springs.  There are no crystalline cities on Mars, yet, but there will be someday.  Perhaps one of the first should be named after Ray."

I'm certain that "Bradbury" will be a future destination on Mars, whether it's Bradbury Crater or Bradbury City. What do you think? Feel free to leave your tributes as comments below.

More about Ray Bradbury and Mars:

• The Last Word: Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012
• Science-fiction legend Ray Bradbury dies at 91
• Scientists and sci-fi authors alike mourn Ray Bradbury
• Ray Bradbury foresaw the future — and didn't trust it
• Cosmic Log archive on Mars

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.