Introduction -- The ancient sky. Prehistoric stargazing ; The ancient Babylonians ; The sky-watchers of ancient China ; Ancient Egyptian astronomy ; The ancient Greeks ; The heavenly spheres ; The Ptolemaic cosmos ; The Jain universe -- The medieval sky. The rise of Islamic astronomy ; Inventing the star-taker ; Islamic celestial works reach Europe ; European astronomy ; The new study of the sky ; The sea above the sky ; Capturing the cosmos: clockwork and the printing press ; Celestial phenomena: part one ; Mesoamerica -- The scientific sky. The Copernican revolution ; Tycho Brahe ; Johannes Kepler ; Galileo Galilei The Cartesian universe ; Johannes Hevelius maps of the moon ; Newtonian physics ; Halley's comet -- The modern sky. William and Caroline Herschel ; Coining the asteroid ; John Herschel and the great moon hoax ; Neptune identified ; The phantom planet: Vulcan ; Spectroscopy and the dawn of astrophysics ; Celestial phenomena: part two ; Percival Lowell spies life on Mars ; The search for Planet X and the discovery of Pluto ; Organizing the stars: 'Pickering's women' ; New visions of the universe: Einstein, Lemaître and Hubble ; Breakthroughs of the Twentieth Century, and beyond -- Afterword.