Introduction

      Prepare yourself for an adventure… that will take you deep into space and far back in time. This great journey begins the moment you cast your eyes up into the night sky. After a while you’ll be looking beyond the stars, wondering about distant life or maybe thinking just how fantastically big this whole Universe thing is.

      I vividly remember when I was six, gazing out of my bedroom window with a desire to learn the names of the bright stars and the patterns I knew existed in the form of constellations. Little did I know what I had started – a lifelong trip which never ceases to amaze me. We are now in the age of Hubble, Cassini, Galileo, Hipparchos and Messenger (etc., etc.) – spacecraft that open up the vistas of the Universe to realms that excite while causing us to constantly rearrange our jigsaw of… well, everything. And this is not going to slow down. Look out for specially trained astronauts on the Moon and Mars, and ‘ordinary’ astronauts (that’s you and me) taking short trips into space.

      Hopefully I can share some of my wonderment through these pages. None of this is rocket science (apart from the rocket science stuff). The name of the stargazing game is easy, short observing whenever you have a few spare moments while the stars are twinkling overhead.

      ‘Oh, but I can’t see the stars from where I live,’ is always a good one. Read carefully, as this will be written only once: living in a town, city or anywhere with light-polluted skies need not deter anyone from stargazing. Although the sky glow washes out the fainter stars, the major constellations will still be visible. So you won’t be hindered from learning the main star patterns. No excuse there, then!

      Don’t underestimate the power of ‘doing’ something. Simply by taking a few minutes each day over the course of a year you’ll soon be amazing your friends as you point out Leo and say, ‘Of course, Regulus is a B7-type star about 85 light-years away.’ Or you might glance at the Square of Pegasus, remarking casually, ‘Messier 15 over there was discovered by the wonderful Italian, Maraldi.’ Or even dreamily waft your hand in the direction of Orion, and with a certain authority launch into, ‘The dimensions of M42 are 66 by 60 arc minutes.’ It won’t take long to learn the night sky, and I hope this book will inspire you to make a start.

      The night sky is out there. As this old map shows, it’s all prepared and ready for you

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