CONTENTS
Prologue: Astronomy at Large
EARTH AND SPACE
CHAPTER 1
Restless Earth: The way of the world
CHAPTER 2
The terminator: A user’s guide to nightfall
CHAPTER 3
Starring citizen science: Research by the people
CHAPTER 4
Catch a falling star: Meteors, meteorites and space dust
CHAPTER 5
Radio silence: The quietest place in the world
CHAPTER 6
The off-planet economy: Doing business in space
CHAPTER 7
Moonstruck: Where did our satellite come from?
PLANETARY EXPLORATIONS
CHAPTER 8
Telescope troubles: Astronomers in court
CHAPTER 9
Space bugs: Rules for planetary protection
CHAPTER 10
Climate change: What happened to Mars?
CHAPTER 11
Not our Planet B? Colonising Mars
CHAPTER 12
Ringing in the changes: The vanishing rings of Saturn
CHAPTER 13
Stormy weather: Weird worlds of the Saturnian system
CHAPTER 14
Stalking an invisible planet: The search for Planet Nine
THE UNIVERSE AT LARGE
CHAPTER 15
Nature’s barcode: A user’s guide to light
CHAPTER 16
Reverberations: Exploding stars and light echoes
CHAPTER 17
Signals from the unknown: The fast radio burst mystery
CHAPTER 18
Eye of the storm: Black holes inside and out
CHAPTER 19
Through gravity’s lens: The curious matter of dark matter
CHAPTER 20
Ripples in space: Probing the birth of the Universe
CHAPTER 21
Unrequited love: Is anyone there?
Acknowledgments
Index