Sometimes I just forget our tiny place in the universe. How minuscule an area our atoms occupy, our Earth dwarfed by the enormity of the cosmos. Too large to fathom, to comprehend.

Like the proverbial kick in the solar plexus I ached in awe at the glorious power, space and size of these images and what they represent. My mind started doing gymnastics before conceding defeat and instead stopped to admire the sheer beauty, scope and energy of the images. Enjoy.

The pictures form part of a photographic exhibition at the National History Museum, London starting 22nd January 2016. Called Otherworlds, the exhibition is an exploration of the solar system using some of the hundreds of thousands of images taken by robotic interplanetary probe cameras since the 1960s and recreated by Michael Benson to form the final composite images of the exhibition.

‘Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.’ Stephen Hawking


‘Music in the soul can be heard by the whole universe.’ Lao Tzu

Credit: Nasa/JPL/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures & BBC News.