Ferris combines three different narrative lines in Seeing in the Dark. One is a reminiscence about his own experiences stargazing, beginning when he was a boy on Key Biscayne, Florida, and moving to the present. He now watches through a computer-controlled telescope in his own observatory on Sonoma Mountain, and in one chapter he compares himself to John Henry, reluctantly succumbing to technology—not a steam drill but a go-to telescope.
The second narrative line in the book is a series of discussions with notable amateur observers, the most surprising being Brian May (“We Will Rock You”) from the British rock group Queen, who turns out to have an advanced degree in astronomy. Others include the most acute visual observers of modern times, Stephen James O’Meara and Barbara Wilson, as well as comet-finder David Levy, revered moonwatcher Patrick Caldwell-Moore, amateur planetary photographer Don Parker, and Edgar O. Smith, the rich entrepreneur who built the 1.2-meter Calypso telescope, the only privately-owned telescope amidst the array of professional instruments on Kitt Peak in Arizona. The theme of this part of the book is that modern astronomy involves cooperation among professional and amateur astronomers in a worldwide network. This modern development (or redevelopment, since early astronomical work was largely done by amateurs such as William Herschel) came about because of technology (many amateurs have scopes as large as those in small professional observatories, and the CCD or charge-coupled device camera enables faster photography on smaller instruments) as well as an increasing interest in astronomy over the last decades, resulting in a world-wide watch on planetary phenomena, on the occurrence of supernovae, and on other celestial events, all of which cannot be matched by the professionals, whose limited time on large instruments tends to be dedicated to circumscribed research projects.
The last narrative line of the book is an introduction to astronomy: structuring the other narratives is a systematic movement through the universe from the solar system, starting with the sun and moving outward through the planets to the Milky Way Galaxy, other galaxies, galaxy clusters, and finally quasars, the farthest, and earliest, of observable phenomena.
The way Ferris links his narrative lines may be seen in “The Dark Ages,” a late chapter containing his discussion of supernovae and quasars. He begins the chapter with a personal reference—ending a night of observation by looking at 3C273, a quasar two billion light years distant. He includes conversations with both amateur and professional astronomers in the chapter. And he also shows how supernovae observation demonstrates the amateur-professional cooperation that is one of his main themes: physicists had long suspected that a blast of neutrinos would leave a supernovae several hours before the light of its explosion departed. In 1987 they got a chance to test the theory, when neutrino detectors observed neutrinos from deep space on February 23rd. The evidence was completed by an amateur astrophotographer in Australia who photographed the supernova’s light explosion three hours later, and by another amateur astronomer’s observation confirming that no supernova was visible two hours after the neutrinos began streaming in, thus demonstrating that the neutrino blast preceded the supernova’s light by somewhere between two and three hours.
Ferris is most entertaining when he recounts his own experiences and when he visits other amateur astronomers, talks with them, and gushes over their equipment. The tour of the universe is perhaps the least successful of the book’s parts, though Ferris tries hard to make the book into an introduction to stargazing. He includes appendices with observing techniques, details of Messier objects arranged by season, and even a few star maps.
Seeing in the Dark will not compete with books like David Levy’s The Sky: A User’s Guide or Terence Dickinson’s Nightwatch as a practical introduction to observing, but it is an extremely clear and readable book for those curious about what amateur observers do. Its examples of cooperation between amateur and professional astronomers make the case for a partnership unique among the sciences. And for those of us already hooked on skywatching, it is a fascinating way to meet some of our heroes, such as Stephen O’Meara, David Levy, Patrick Moore, and Ferris himself. ( )

Ferris turns out to be an extremely good story teller. However, for someone looking for a follow up to The Whole Shebang or Coming of Age in the Milky Way, this is probably not your book. Very enjoyable though. ( )

Excellent book - Ferris never dissapoints. Very good mix of science, history and story-telling. ( )

Mostly an extended paean to Earth-based observation of the solar system.