Weird Astronomy: Tales of Unusual, Bizarre, and Other Hard to Explain Observations

You go out for a night’s observing and look up at the sky. There are all the usual suspects—a splattering of stars, the Moon, Venus, maybe Mercury and Mars. Perhaps you can identify some of the constellations. If you are using binoculars or a small telescope, you can see many wonders not revealed to the naked eye but still well known to telescope users for centuries. But what if you look up and see something completely new, something unexplainable. Do your eyes deceive you? Are you really seeing what you think you are seeing? What should you do? In this fascinating account of the many oddball things people – from novice astronomers to certified experts – have observed over the years, you will be introduced to a number of unusual – and sometimes still unexplainable – phenomena occurring in our usually familiar and reassuring skies. What exactly did they see? What discoveries followed these unusual sightings? What remains unexplained? In addition to the accounts, you will find scattered throughout the book a number of suggested astronomy projects that you can do yourself. The projects range from very basic to a bit more challenging, but all are fun and all are very instructive about unusual sightings. Be sure to try them!… (more)