This collection of 83 articles on the history of astronomy is the harvest of a quarter of a century spent in seeking out intriguing, unusual and half-forgotten events. Joe Ashbrook wrote a column regularly for the monthly magazine Sky and Telescope. Professor Owen Gingerich, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has helped in the selection of the very best of these timeless vignettes, and he has contributed a foreword to the collection. Each article has been edited, and in some cases modified, to take account of any subsequent discoveries. Articles are grouped into themes covering biography, telescopes, the solar systems, stars and galaxies, and star atlases. Much of the material cannot be found in standard references in the history of astronomy.
