Their collaboration would lead to the 1993 discovery of Shoemaker-Levy 9, with its several nuclei, five tails, and two sheets of debris spread out in its orbit plane. A year later, Levy would be by the Shoemakers' side again when their comet collided with Jupiter. Not only did this collision revolutionize our understanding of the history of the solar system, but it also offered a spectacular confirmation of one scientist's life work. Moon phases through 2003. Using scores of examples from a wide variety of authors and disciplines, the book demonstrates the difference between strong scientific writing and weak scientific writing.
Transits are rare but interesting.
Much more commonly we can observe the moons or Jupiter and Saturn in transit, and accurate recording and imaging of these events are well within the scope of amateur astronomers. The book is in two parts. The first tells the story of the first scientific expeditions to observe transits, made in an attempt to use transit timing to accurately define the Astronomical Unit. The second part is for practical amateur observers, and explains how to observe transits of all sorts such as the rare transits of Mercury and Venus and transits of the moons of the major planets. Distance determination is not only one of the most important tasks that astronomers face, it is also one of the most difficult.