Night Sky Astronomy

I have spent ten years watching the night sky and talking about it on the Night Sky Podcast, and this book is everything I saw, everything I got wrong, and everything that is still coming. It opens in a harvested field near Albany, Oregon, at three in the morning, waiting for the 2017 total solar eclipse, and it never really leaves the field. From the corona and the shadow crossing Oregon, to Comet NEOWISE over the John Day River in Eastern Oregon, to Jupiter and Saturn closing to a thumb's width in December 2020, to Mars going backward in the sky and the Perseids burning up over a campout, this is stargazing as it actually happens: cold, patient, occasionally ruined by clouds or wildfire smoke, and worth every hour of it.
The book braids three things. First, the observing itself: what I saw through binoculars and a small Dobsonian telescope, and what my cameras caught when I set them up right. Second, the ancient sky: what the Babylonian scribes knew about the Saros cycle, why the Egyptians watched Sirius for the Nile flood, and how the Maya tracked Venus with an accuracy that still surprises us. Third, the almanac: what to watch for from 2026 to 2040, including the 2026 eclipse paths, the close approach of asteroid Apophis in 2029, and the Leonid outburst of 2033. If you have ever lain on the hood of a car in the dark and wondered what you were looking at, this book is for you.