Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Part I: Stalking the Cosmos 5
Chapter 1: Seeing the Light: The Art and Science of Astronomy 7
Chapter 2: Join the Crowd: Skywatching Activities and Resources 27
Chapter 3: The Way You Watch Tonight: Terrifi c Tools for Observing the Skies 45
Chapter 4: Just Passing Through: Meteors, Comets, and Artifi cial Satellites 65
Part II: Going Once Around the Solar System 85
Chapter 5: A Matched Pair: Earth and Its Moon 87
Chapter 6: Earth’s Near Neighbors: Mercury, Venus, and Mars 109
Chapter 7: Rock On: The Asteroid Belt and Near-Earth Objects 129
Chapter 8: Great Balls of Gas: Jupiter and Saturn 139
Chapter 9: Far Out! Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Beyond 151
Part III: Meeting Old Sol and Other Stars 161
Chapter 10: The Sun: Star of Earth 163
Chapter 11: Taking a Trip to the Stars 187
Chapter 12: Galaxies: The Milky Way and Beyond 217
Chapter 13: Digging into Black Holes and Quasars 241
Part IV: Pondering the Remarkable Universe 255
Chapter 14: Is Anybody Out There? SETI and Planets of Other Suns 257
Chapter 15: Delving into Dark Matter and Antimatter 277
Chapter 16: The Big Bang and the Evolution of the Universe 289
Part V: The Part of Tens 301
Chapter 17: Ten Strange Facts about Astronomy and Space 303
Chapter 18: Ten Common Errors about Astronomy and Space 307
Part VI: Appendixes 311
Appendix A: Star Maps 313
Appendix B: Glossary 321
Index 325