Coffee Table Book of: Earth from Orbit (Hardcover)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Earth from Orbit is a large-format coffee table book about our planet seen from orbit, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two. Some look along the curved edge of the Earth, others down on its land, water, ice and cloud, by day and by night.

It opens on the band of blue air along the Earth’s curve: sunlit cloud tops casting long shadows, silvery-blue clouds glowing just above the horizon at twilight, the sun on the horizon with the air banded orange and blue, and a thin crescent moon hanging in the black of space.

Rivers and deltas: a braided river across grey gravel, two rivers, one green and one brown, running side by side unmixed, a great delta branching out into a turquoise sea, and a brown river looping among crescent oxbow lakes.

Ice and snow: a valley glacier striped with dark rock debris, a flat-topped iceberg adrift in a dark sea, bright blue meltwater lakes on an ice sheet, and the long white edge of an ice shelf. Mountains and volcanoes: a snow-capped volcanic cone, a round deep-blue lake in a volcano’s crater, rock folded into tight loops, and a grey column of ash bending away over the sea.

Coasts, reefs and islands: a pale line of reef and surf between a turquoise lagoon and the deep blue ocean, long narrow fjords between snowy mountains, and a hooked spit of pale sand. Lakes of many colours: salt ponds in pink, red and green, a rose-red salt lake ringed with white, and a milky turquoise lake below a glacier.

Living colour: green plankton drawn into long spiralling ribbons, a lake streaked bright green, and wooded hills patched with red and gold.

Fields: round green fields in neat rows, fine green terraces ringing rounded hills, and a patchwork of gold, green and brown. Toward the end, the night side: a dark coastline traced by glowing towns, a thin band of green airglow along the Earth’s dark edge, green curtains of aurora, a storm lit from within by lightning, and a city’s golden web of streets.

Short notes run through the book. They are about the planet rather than about the pictures: why a delta is named after the Greek letter delta; why clear water over pale sand looks turquoise and deep water dark blue; how little of the world’s desert is covered by sand; and how many of the world’s people live near the sea.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.