Look, compare, investigate. These are mission photographs, camera mosaics and a lunar laser-altimetry map, with their processing identified. They document real features; the book’s proposed common comet swarm is a separate interpretation. Images alone do not establish a shared event or a shared date.
01MARS / HELLAS IMPACT BASIN
Hellas, under seasonal frost
Color photographic mosaicNASA/JPL/USGS
What the mission shows
Viking resolves the vast Hellas depression in Mars’s southern hemisphere. In this seasonal view, bright carbon dioxide frost fills part of the basin.
How the book connects it
Chapter Three compares Hellas with Antarctica and connects its impact to Tharsis and the proposed comet swarm.
False-color topographic visualizationNASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
What the mission shows
LOLA measured the immense depression on the lunar far side. In this map, blue and purple reveal the low basin while red marks higher surrounding terrain.
How the book connects it
Chapter Three places this basin in its comparison of large impact features across several worlds.
A data visualization from Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter measurements, not a photograph. Blues and greens encode low elevations; reds encode high terrain. This SPA frame uses early LOLA topographic results.
MDIS camera imagery assembled in an orthographic projection at 250 metres per pixel. The source identifies the mosaic center as 31.5°N, 162.7°E; acquisition dates are not supplied.
A projected global map assembled from three-filter Ralph/MVIC observations. North is up; coverage and resolution vary across the map. This is not a single photograph.
Voyager 2 revealed a polar cap and dark streaks associated with plume deposits on a world with nitrogen frost. The mapped terrain is varied rather than featureless.
How the book connects it
Chapter Three connects Triton’s volatile surface and sparse cratering with the proposed nitrogen-ice swarm.
Orange-, violet- and ultraviolet-filter images are displayed as red, green and blue. These colors emphasize surface differences and are not a human-eye color view.
Left: blue, green and orange filter frames approximating human-eye color. Right: ultraviolet, violet and orange frames with strong contrast enhancement; the bright limb is a processing artifact.
Infrared-, green- and ultraviolet-filter frames were combined, with the natural reddish color reduced and other differences enhanced. Image scale is 362 metres per pixel.
Planet Nine has not been discovered. The hypothesis uses the orbits of distant objects to ask whether another planet could be shaping the outer solar system.
Chapter Six connects that proposed planet to the origin of the comet swarm. The book’s orbit diagram lets you explore the idea; it is a schematic, with illustrative parameters, rather than an observed orbit.
About these comparisons. Book connections follow Chapters Three and Six of the retained Vision Edition manuscript. The September 2026 Online chapter reader is a separate edition. Mission descriptions here are editorial summaries linked to the original image records. The images have only been proportionally resized and encoded for the web; their original scientific processing is described with each record.
NASA imagery is presented as credited research material. NASA, JPL and the mission partners do not endorse the book or its interpretation. NASA media-use guidance ↗
