The Georgian Star, my new book on William Herschel, will be published officially on Nov. 17, but I’ve just gotten copies of the finished book, and it looks terrific. It’s part of the Great Discoveries series, and if you look at the other authors, I’m in shockingly good company. Here’s the cover.

Not bad, huh?
If you live in New York, feel free to come hear me speak at the Strand Bookstore, along with Charles Seife who’s written a terrific new book on fusion. I have to look up the time, but it’s on the evening of Nov. 6. Mark your calendars. More dates for more appearances to follow.

OK, that semester loomed and has now unloomed. But another one is upon us. This time, I’m teaching at Princeton again, but two courses rather than one—a freshman seminar called “Life on Mars…or Maybe Not,” which is on the interaction between science and the media (my co-instructor is Edwin Turner, an astrophysicist); and a seminar called “Communicating Sustainablity,” co-taught with Princeton’s director of sustainability, Shana Weber. I’m also teaching Environmental Reporting at the SHERP program at NYU.

Pretty crazy, I know, but it’ll be fun, I promise.

It’s been a while, so I’m changing the status of the Herschel book from “nearly finished” to “finished and in production.” It should be out next fall. The editors at Atlas and Co. have improved the title vastly, from my boring “The Seventh Planet,” to the much more intriguing and literary-sounding “The Georgian Star.” That’s why they get the big bucks. I hope all of you who read this will buy it and ask 1000 of your closest friends to do so also.

They want an author photo too. What do you think of this one? (It’s from a wedding).

Next week, I begin teaching at three different institutions: Princeton, Columbia and Johns Hopkins. If it doesn’t kill me, it will make me stronger.

Seriously, teaching is unbelievably rewarding. Some of my students have actually gone on to become professional writers and journalists, and while I don’t get to take credit, I’m fully entitled to take pride, which I do.

I’m about to submit the manuscript for my latest book, a scientific biography of the (mostly) 18th century astronomer William Herschel, which will (if they accept it!) be part of the Great Discoveries series published by Atlas Books.

When James Atlas came to me with the idea of doing this book, all I knew about Herschel was that he had discovered the planet Uranus. I’ve since learned that this was probably the least important thing he did in science. Herschel was the first to do comprehensive surveys of the night sky, listing and categorizing every object he found—a crucial technique for understanding the universe, and a standard practice today. He discovered infrared radiation. He proposed that what we see in the night sky is only snapshot of a continually evolving universe; objects that look very different can actually be similar objects in different stages of development.

Herschel was also a master telescope builder and a very creative theorist. And the best part is that he had a very successful career as a professional musician before he turned his attention to astronomy, in his mid-30s.

So it’s been enormous fun, and I’ll keep you posted on what’s happening with the book.

The post directly below this one is just a little bit out of date. It’s from the opening page of my first website, put up in 1998 or so; the site was never updated after that, because I had no idea how to do it. Thanks to a young web designer named Dan O’Shea, I now have a new website (you’re there, in case you didn’t realize that), and I even know how to change it. Kind of amazing—to me, anyway.
So if you want to know what was new in 1998, check it out. If you’re interested in what’s going on currently, stay tuned. And you can look over to the right to see what’s generally going on.

I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve asked you all here.

Well the primary reason is that I’ve come out with a new book on the search for life in the universe. It’s called OTHER WORLDS, published by Simon & Schuster, and it explains how scientists are on the verge of answering this very ancient question. For a small preview, look at Other Worlds.

But you might also be interested in some of the other things I’m involved in. For example, I’ve got another book in print called The Light at the Edge of the Universe; it’s about the Big Bang and the quest to answer some of the most fundamental questions about the universe–how big it is, how old, what it’s made of, what it really looks like. For more information about it, check out The Light at the Edge of the Universe at Amazon Books.

And let’s not forget my regular job at Time. I’ve been working at the magazine for 12 years; at last count, I’d written 26 cover stories on topics ranging from particle physics to canine genetics to emerging viruses to Biblical archaeology. If you’d like to look at some of them, check out the Time website.

Finally, for a bit more detail about my background and the sorts of things that interest me, find out About the Author.