Kenneth Libbrecht & Rachel Wing 
Capturing Snowflakes 
Winter’s Frozen Artistry

As much a work of art as a testament to science, this revised, hardcover edition of the best-selling The Art of the Snowflake (now Capturing Snowflakes) includes a laser-cut silver snowflake ornament in its cover and showcases 430+ images of snowflakes captured by the photo-microscope of the world’s leading expert on the subject, Kenneth Libbrecht, a professor of physics at Caltech who also served as a science consultant for Disney’s Frozen movies.

 

The snow may seem unvaried to the naked eye, but
the microscope reveals an amazing menagerie of beautiful crystalline forms . Building on the pioneering work of Wilson Bentley (1865-1931), Libbrecht has developed techniques for capturing images of snow crystals in unprecedented detail. While wondering at the
hundreds of exquisite snowflake portraits , find:

 

• The science behind snowflakes, including how they form on a molecular level and the complex process that guarantees each one’s uniqueness


• Field notes from Libbrecht’s photographic expeditions to the frozen north


• The taxonomy of snowflakes and examples of each type: simple plates and prisms, columns and needles, capped columns, sectored plates, stellar plates, stellar dendrites, triangular crystals, double plates, split plates, split stars, and even rare twelve-branched snowflakes


• Quotations  about the wonder of snowflakes and nature from Aristotle, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and more

This book is a breathtaking look at the works of art that melt in an instant.

 

About the author

Rachel Wing is a park ranger for the city of Monrovia, California, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. With a background in geology, she now specializes in balancing wilderness preservation with wildfire safety for nearby residents. Rachel loves to hike and climb in these hills, especially on the rare occasions when snow graces our desert-like plants. She has been accompanying Ken Libbrecht as a snowflake chaser for nearly 20 years.