William Sheehan is an astronomical historian and author of the biography of Milky Way photographer and pioneering astronomer E.E. Barnard,
The Immortal Fire Within
(Cambridge University Press, 1995). He is a regular scholar-in-residence at leading observatories, including Yerkes, Lick, Lowell and Mt. Wilson. As both a professional psychiatrist and an astronomer, he has a unique insight into the personalities of the pioneering figures of the history of science. He has published a number of books on the history of solar system studies, especially on the Moon and Mars. Sheehan is a consulting editor of
Sky & Telescope
, a 2001 fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for his research on the Milky Way, and a recipient of the Gold Medal of the Oriental Astronomical Association. Asteroid no.16037 is named in his honor.

Christopher Conselice, an astronomer at the University of Nottingham, is one of the world's leading experts on galaxy formationand evolution. He was educated at the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has held post-doctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and the Space Telescope Science Institute. He was a regular contributor to
Mercury
, the magazine of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He has published his research in leading professional journals, including
Science
,
Nature
and the
Astrophysical Journal
.

Presents a historical approach of the history of astronomy that helps the reader to understand why we know what we do about the Universe

Discusses the modern view of the Universe from the time of Galileo to present day observations of expansion, dark energy and dark matter

Fills a niche that has not been occupied by any books since Timothy Ferris's Galaxies (1980) and Henbest and Couper's Guide to the Galaxy (1994)