Our senses allow us to see only a small fraction of our surroundings because we can detect only a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. For more than a century we have developed technologies that have allowed us to create images using energies that exist outside these limits.

In Invisible Worlds: Exploring the Unseen (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20), Piers Bizony has collected together a sample of the pictures produced by techniques such as cloud chambers, electron microscopes and modern telescopes. Along with more familiar scientific images, Bizony has included examples of the application of these technologies to our everyday lives, such as an ultrasound scan of an unborn baby and this snapshot of illegal immigrants, taken from a covert surveillance vehicle using backscatter X-ray technology. The text that accompanies each picture explains the science behind the imaging technique.