| Preface (1994) | |
| Preface (1988) | |
| Acknowledgments | |
| Ch. 1 | A View from Planet Earth | |
| Stars and Stories | 1 |
| What Astronomers Do | 4 |
| Lights in the Sky | 6 |
| Taking Stock of the Sky | 7 |
| Ch. 2 | Messages in Starlight | |
| The Measure of the Stars | 19 |
| The Doppler Shift and the Motions of Stars | 26 |
| The Measure of the Universe | 30 |
| Ch. 3 | New Stars in Ancient Times | |
| The Early Records | 42 |
| The Chinese Records | 45 |
| How to Recognize a Supernova | 50 |
| First Millennium Supernovae | 54 |
| The Supernova of 1006 | 56 |
| The Supernova of 1054 | 59 |
| The Supernova of 1181 | 65 |
| A Thousand Years of Watching | 67 |
| Ch. 4 | Supernovae and the Revolution in Science | |
| Aristotle and the Medieval Cosmos | 69 |
| Tycho and the Nova Stella of 1572 | 74 |
| The New Star of 1604 | 82 |
| The New Cosmos | 86 |
| Ch. 5 | The Long Wait | |
| The Unsteady Stars | 90 |
| A Bright Star in Andromeda | 94 |
| The Recognition of Supernovae | 97 |
| Supernovae Defined | 101 |
| The Search Begins | 107 |
| High Tech Enters the Picture | 111 |
| The Human Eye versus the Eye of the Machine | 114 |
| Still Waiting after All These Years | 116 |
| Ch. 6 | Why Stars Explode | |
| Supernovae Observed | 119 |
| The Life of a Star | 125 |
| Over the Brink | 130 |
| Light Curves and Spectra | 136 |
| Type I Supernovae | 139 |
| Growing Distinctions | 140 |
| The State of Present Knowledge | 142 |
| Ch. 7 | Wisps and Tatters | |
| Supernova Remnants | 145 |
| The Crab Nebula | 146 |
| The Secret Life of Cassiopeia A | 155 |
| Young Supernova Remnants | 161 |
| Old Supernova Remnants | 164 |
| Ch. 8 | The Eye of the Storm | |
| Looking for Phantoms | 169 |
| The Discovery of Pulsars | 170 |
| The Nature of the Beast | 174 |
| Pulsars, Neutron Stars, and Supernova Remnants | 181 |
| From Neutron Stars to Black Holes | 186 |
| A Partial Picture | 194 |
| Ch. 9 | Seeding the Stars | |
| Atoms and the Universe | 197 |
| In the Beginning | 201 |
| Element Formation in Stars | 203 |
| Seeding the Stars | 206 |
| The Journeywork of the Stars | 212 |
| Ch. 10 | Cosmic Dimensions | |
| A Universe of Galaxies | 217 |
| Probing the Depths of Space | 218 |
| Shaping the Galaxies | 223 |
| Primordial Supernovae | 230 |
| Ch. 11 | A Death in the Neighborhood | |
| A Dot in a Cloud of Light | 235 |
| Which Star Exploded? | 243 |
| Much Ado about Almost Nothing - The Neutrino Burst | 249 |
| Observations and Theories | 256 |
| Clues in the Spectra | 260 |
| The Mystery Spot | 261 |
| What Do We Know So Far? | 264 |
| What's Next? | 265 |
| Ch. 12 | Into the Future | |
| A New Science | 269 |
| New Ways of Looking | 271 |
| Prospects | 274 |
| Epilogue (1994) | 277 |
| Bibliographical Notes | 299 |
| Glossary | 303 |
| Index | 311 |
