“I’ve been interested in astronomy since I was 5, and I want to tell everybody how cool it is,” says adam frank, who is both an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester and a science writer. His academic work with the Spitzer Space Telescope resulted in a paper he coauthored for The Astrophysical Journal Letters  as well as our cover story, “How Nature Builds a Planet,” on page 28. The Spitzer is changing science, Frank says. “It’s putting meat on the bones of planetary-formation theories.” He has also written for Astronomy magazine.

For this month’s cover illustration, we turned to kenn brown (right, in this composite image) and chris wren (left), the imaginative duo who make up Mondolithic Studios in Vancouver, B.C. “We attempted to visually distill planet formation to its most important components—to iconify it while still keeping true to science,” Brown says. “If we are successful, somebody can immediately extract a story—and a context.” The team has illustrated covers for Wired and features for Business 2.0.

Writer steven kotler approached “Extreme States,” page 60, with a degree of caution. “When people talk about near-death experiences, all of my skeptical filters go up,” he says, then adds, “I think within our lifetime a lot of things written off as ‘freaky’ are going to start making a lot more sense.” Kotler has written for Outside, Wired, Psychology Today, GQ, and The New York Times Magazine. His book, West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origin of Belief (Bloomsbury), will be out next year.

Photographer michele abeles considered herself something of a mushroom connoisseur until she spent a day with Greg Mueller, a mycologist at the Field Museum in Chicago. Her interest paled next to his. “He was very passionate about mushrooms and about educating people about them,” she says. Shooting Mueller for “Dr. Mushroom,” on page 48, left Abeles with an even greater passion for the fungi as well as a sense of wonder at their diversity. Her work has also appeared in New York and The New York Times Magazine.