Cruising Otherworlds @ London's Natural History Museum

Prepared to be amazed, wandering among never-before-seen views of mother Earth and its majestic, however-unfriendly-to-human-life neighbours, with enough scientific data to give you a clue without venturing into baffling academic territory. London's Natural History Museum introduces the exhibition Otherworlds (until 15 May) - and you will never again look at our solar system in the same way.

Straddling the line between art and science, artist Michael Benson creates 77 stunning, true-colour montages of images of our solar system (provided by NASA and the European Space Agency) captured in the six passed decades of space travel.

The cherry on the cake is the original soundscape created by music icon Brian Eno, delicately adding to the exploratory atmosphere and planet mystique. In his own words, "Space is silent. It's a vacuum. In fact we can't really experience space directly at all: even those few humans who've been out there have done so inside precarious cocoons. So we've become used to translating our feelings and understandings about space into metaphors, mental playgrounds where we're allowed to imagine how it could be. That process of imagining is unanchored to experience, unconfined by any demand other than it be in some way true to our feelings. Making music about space, then, is sheer fantasy, or perhaps sheer metaphor.” Well-put, and well-translated into sound - though, naturally, the visuals remain the...star here.

This is an unforgettable astro-voyage - even within the museum walls.

A Warming Comet (courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

The oddly twin-lobed Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko vents gas and dust about a month before perihelion – the closest point to the Sun along its orbit. Outflows and jets of cometary material can be seen as the comet heats up.

Rosetta, 7 July, 2015

Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM–CC BY-SA IGO 3.0/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Dark side of the rings (courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

This spectacular view looks down on Saturn’s northern regions, with its pole still in the darkness of the northern hemisphere winter. The rings cast a band of shadow across the gas giant world.

Mosaic composite photograph. Cassini, 20 January 2007.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy of Flowers Gallery 

Late afternoon on Mars (courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

View of Husband Hill within Gusev Crater, in the late afternoon light. Husband Hill was named in memory of Columbia Space Shuttle Commander Rick Husband, who died, along with six other astronauts, when Columbia disintegrated on entering Earth’s atmosphere in 2003.

Mosaic composite photograph. Spirit Rover, 16 April 2006.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy of Flowers Gallery 

Typhoon over Bay of Bengal (courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

The immense vortex of tropical Cyclone 03B slams into India’s east coast with wind speeds approaching 120 kilometres an hour. Below, the teardrop-shaped island of Sri Lanka is relatively cloud free.

Photograph. Terra, 15 December 2003.

Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, Lucian Plesea, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team/NASA GSFC/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Crescent Jupiter and Ganymede (courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

Jupiter’s largest moon Ganymede, seen here on the right, is the ninth largest object in the solar system and is bigger than the planet Mercury. Like Europa, Ganymede’s surface is composed of water ice, and is thought to have a sub-surface ocean.

Mosaic composite photograph. Cassini, 10 January, 2001

Credit: NASA/JPL/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Enceladus vents water into space (courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth largest moon, erupts a vast spray of water into space from its southern polar region. The water immediately freezes. The moon is lit by the Sun on the left, and backlit by the reflecting surface of its parent planet to the right (not in this photograph).

Mosaic composite photograph. Cassini, 25 December 2009.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Ground fog in Valles Marineris (courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

The western part of the Valles Marineris canyon system is seen here covered in morning water-ice and water-vapour ground fog. The canyon is more than six and a half kilometres deep in places, over three times deeper than the Grand Canyon in Arizona, the United States.

Mosaic composite photograph. Mars Express, 25 May 2004.

Credit: ESA/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy of Flowers Gallery 

Moonlight on the Adriatic (courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

In this luminous view of southern Europe, the Adriatic Sea with its many islands gleams in reflected moonlight. In the centre, the Italian peninsula extends into the Mediterranean Sea. To the lower right, Milan’s road network blazes. South is up.

Mosaic composite photograph. ISS 023 crew, 29 April 2010.

Credit: NASA JSC/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy of Flowers Gallery