Michael Benson to appear at the 24th annual LA Times Festival of Books, on a panel discussion titled “The Wonder of the Cosmos,” Sunday April 25th, at 12 noon. The panel, to be moderated by LA Times writer Tom Curwin, will also include K.C. Cole and Margaret Wertheim. The event will take place at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus, and will include a book signing. For more information on the Festival of Books click here; for a press release about the event click here.

The Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Mass, has acquired three photographs from Kinetikon Pictures, two of which are from Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes. The photographs will be on display in the fall as part of an exhibit called "Photography at the Worcester Art Museum: Keeping Shadows," which will document the history of photography from daguerreotypes to digital imaging. For more click here.

On Monday October 20th, 2003, a symposium inspired by Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes was held at the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. Titled “Far Out: The Sublime Photographic Legacy of the Interplanetary Space Probes,” the event was co-sponsored by The Hayden Planetarium and The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU and featured writers, photographers, and planetary scientists. Participants included Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, who moderated the discussion; Bruce Murray, the former director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab; Ann Druyan, a longtime collaborator with the late Carl Sagan; Joel Meyerowitz, photographer and author of the book Cape Light; Arthur C. Danto, the philosopher and art critic for The Nation; Lawrence Weschler, author of Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder; Michael Benson, author of Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes; and (by video and satellite hook-up) Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey.