Stephen E. Strom received his PhD in astronomy from Harvard University in 1964. He has held appointments at Harvard, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, and the University of Massachusetts. He has served as associate director for science at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson for nine years, retiring in 2007. His photography complements poems and essays in three books published by University of Arizona Press. Strom's photographic work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, and is held in several permanent collections, including those at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson and at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Bradford A. Smith has served as a professor of planetary sciences and astronomy at the University of Arizona, a research astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and visiting associate professor in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology.

He has participated in a number of American and international space missions, including Mars Mariners 6, 7, and 10; Mars Viking; the Soviet Vega mission to Comet Halley; the Soviet Phobos mission to Mars; and the Wide Field/Planetary Camera team for the Hubble Space Telescope.