Before being a destination, other worlds were a spectacle. This theme gathers the popular astronomy that nourished astronautics: illustrated summas, planetary landscapes painted long before photographs, panoramas that took readers from the Moon to Mars long before the probes, and the great debates on the plurality of worlds and life elsewhere.
After the first missions of exploration, the gaze changes: photographs replace paintings, and syntheses fix the state of knowledge as the discoveries unfold. Snapshots quickly dated, fascinating precisely for that reason.
It is the most contemplative theme of the bibliography, and the most accessible: a good entry point for those who come to space history through astronomy.