David H. Levy is the co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker-Levy, which slammed into Jupiter in 1994 in a series of spectacular explosions with a force equal to several million tons of TNT. He is the author of More Things in Heaven and Earth, the Man Who Sold the Milky Way, The Ultimate Universe and Impact Jupiter. Levy was asked by Parade Magazine to take over the science column after the death of Carl Sagan. Levy is also the editor of The Scientific American Book of the Cosmos.
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part I. Getting Started: 1. First night out
2. Without a telescope
3. Meteors
4. Choosing a telescope
5. Telescopes, advanced
6. Recording your observations
Part II. Moon, Sun and Planets: 7. The moon
8. Moon II: advanced observations
9. The sun
10. Jupiter
11. Saturn
12. Mars
13. Five planets worth watching
Part III. Minor Bodies: 14. Asteroids
15. Comets
Part IV. Deep Sky: 16. Double stars
17. Variable stars
18. TV corvi: a variable star adventure
19. The deep sky
20. Messier hunting
21. The sky on film
22. The electronic revolution, part I: CCDs
23. The electronic revolution, part II: astrometry
Part V. Special Events: 24. Solar eclipses
25. Lunar eclipses and occulations
Part Vi. A Miscellany: 26. Passing the torch
27. The poet's sky
28. My favorite objects
Appendix: resources
Index.
