Discusses how recent innovations such as the new telescopes are affecting the study of astronomy, our understanding of the universe, and the search for new galaxies and the origins of life.

Gives instructions for building or making theodolites, sundials, telescopes, spectroscopes, planetariums, and models of stars, and describes methods and times for observing the sun, moon, planets, stars, comets, and meteors.

Covers all major topics in astronomy and space science and includes concise biographies of leading astronomers, accounts of national space programs, and descriptions of significant celestial objects and the tools astronomers use to study them

Winner of the 1988 American Institute of Physics Prize, Ferris's book offers the listener 'an exhilarating, wide-ranging journey that takes us from the shores of the Mediterranean, where the second-century astronomer Claudius Ptolemy fashioned his creaky celestial spheres, to modern-day research institutes, where theorists contemplate this and other universes bubbling out of a quantum vacuum.' (The New York Times)