The friendly guide to the universe Book

Then I felt like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.
(Mr. Keats)

There's a passage in the section on Space Trash where author Nancy Hathaway describes the trillions of particles of space debris created by mankind thanks to all of the satellites and rockets and discarded other items we have sent outside of our own polluted planet. She details what would happen when even a sliver of a paint chip might rip through a spacesuit. It's as though humans infect everything, even when we just want to expand our horizons.

I state this because this book is more than just a guide to astronomy...it's full of poetry and thoughts nestled in with the facts. Oh book, where were thee when I needed thee at university? Those constellations never made sense to me (mainly because they never looked like crabs and bulls), but this book shines new light on our starry, starry skies with a dollop of fun.

Copernicus proved that Ptolemy was wrong.
Kepler proved that Copernicus was wrong.
Galileo proved that Aristotle was wrong.
But at that point the sequence broke down, because science then came up against that incaclculable phenomenon...an Englishman.
(George Bernard Shaw on Isaac Newton)

As the reader, I very much enjoyed the way the book was presented. The planets and galaxies and stars and pulsars, for instance, each get their own section but within each section are other added tidbits, such as Edgar Allen Poe or Bode's Law or Raisin Bread analogies or everything you wanted to know about meteors. James Joyce-isms are sprinkled throughout and poets abound. Mercury is "a squirting lacquey of the sun, who seldom shows his face in these parts, as if he were in debt". Written before the snooty-toots downgraded Pluto from its planetary status (I feel Pluto is a victim), this is still a vibrant look at the universe .

When I was in college, there were two sorts of science courses: courses for those who wished to become scientists, and courses for the rest of us. This book is for the rest of us.

As well it should be.

Book Season = Year Round (Betelgeusian)