This is Sir Patrick Moore's first collection of Sky at Night essays for more than ten years, and the first since his long-deserved knighthood. It will be warmly welcomed by his legion of enthusiastic fans.The book accompanies the hugely successful BBC television series, and ranges across the whole spectrum of astronomy, space exploration and astrophysics.The essays track the amazing story of astronomical discovery over the last eventful decade. For Earthbound viewers, the spectacular appearance of the Hale-Bopp and Halley's comets, followed by solar and lunar eclipses, triggered a huge upsurge in popular interest. In this same decade, the Hubble Space Telescope transmitted thousands of spectacular images from deep space, shedding new light on the structure and origins of the Universe. And the robot lander on the surface of Mars relayed amazing information about surface conditions on the red planet - which some scientists believe will be the next home for mankind.The essays include fascinating discussions with many leading astronomers, and are rendered in Sir Patrick's inimitable conversational style. The topics covered include radio astronomy, the lives of the galaxies, millennium comets, the story of the telescope, the birth and death of stars, the mission to Eros, black holes, the exploration of the Solar System, and the possibility of life elsewhere in the Universe. Irresistible reading.the authorSir Patrick Moore has been popularizing astronomy for over 40 years and has written more than 60 books on the subject. He has worked his way into the record books as the presenter of the world's longest running television series - The Sky At Night. In 1967 he was awarded the OBE for his services to astronomy, followed in 1988 by the CBE; then, in 2001, he received a knighthood. He is a member of numerous national and international astronomical societies and also holds honorary doctorates from a number of British universities.Foreword by Ian Russell (BBC TV Pr