Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I feel obligated as a first-time author to thank every person I have ever
met. I have been accused of being overly wordy (mostly by my editor at
Wiley, Jeff Golick). I cannot imagine what he and others are thinking, but
to give them the benefit of the doubt, I’ll be brief.
Lynette Scafidi is a naturalist at the Brookside Nature Center in
Wheaton, Maryland. Through a coincidence set in motion by her, I became
acquainted with Steve Maran, a well-known astronomy author and
press officer for the American Astronomical Society. Steve helped my
public outreach career tremendously, and he also recommended his own
literary agent to me when I asked about writing a book. Skip Barker is a
pretty good agent to a punk astronomer trying to break into the business,
and he did a lot of legwork in getting this book published. I owe the
basic existence of this book to Lynette, Steve, and Skip. Speaking of
Lynette, I strongly recommend a side-trip to the Brookside Nature Center
for anyone visiting Washington, D.C. Call them at (301) 946-9071.
My thanks goes to Dr. Mark Voit, who agreed to be the technical
editor for this book. Mark is a professional astronomer who does a lot of
work with Hubble and really knows his stuff. If there are any remaining
technical errors in this book, blame me and not him.
There are a large number of people who helped guide my thinking and
actions while preparing this book. Among them are Paul Lowman, Alistair
Fraser, Ken Croswell, C. Leroy Ellenberger, Mikolas Sawicki, Dan Durda,
Bill Dalton, Delee Smith, Barb Thompson, Rebecca Eliot, and of course
the pack of weirdos who frequent the Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board on
my web site. Also, thanks to the people at Astronomy magazine for
allowing me to use an unedited version of my April 1998 article “A Full
Moon in Every Plot,” which in full bloom is in this book as chapter 24.
Thanks to my boss, Lynn Cominsky, for talking up my site to people
who could influence my career, and to the people with whom I work, for
not getting bored listening to me rant about this stuff. Also to Dan
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