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Astronomy's much more fun when you're not an astronomer.

For it is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions through careful and expert study.

We are the laws of chemistry and physics as they have played out here on Earth, and we are now learning that planets are as common as stars. Most stars, as it turns out now, will have planets.

Koranic teaching still insists that the sun moves around the earth. How can we advance when they teach things like that?

In future, children won't perceive the stars as mere twinkling points of light: they'll learn that each is a 'Sun', orbited by planets fully as interesting as those in our Solar system.

The Sun, Moon and Stars are there to guide us.

I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.

Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.