Mars has long offered the prospect of another living world near Earth, a key reason NASA plans to land two spacecraft on the planet just after Christmas. And it is a truly fascinating world - with ancient volcanoes taller than any of our mountains, giant canyons, snowy polar caps and devastating dust storms. Though the very first spacecraft dashed colourful visions of little green men tending canals, more recent spacecraft have painted a picture of a world that long ago may have been similar to Earth, with warm temperatures, water, and possibly life. MAGNIFICENT MARS is visually stunning, it features colour photographs from space observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope, Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, and more - digitally reprocessed by an expert photographer to look better than NASA's own versions. Here are images and discoveries that have never appeared in any book, including dramatic foldouts, topographic maps of the Martian surface, and details of the recent discoveries of water flows down Martian hillsides and huge quantities of water ice.