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This collection brings together for the first time twenty-eight of noted astronomer Donald Fernie's best "Marginalia" columns from American Scientist magazine. Published between 1985 and the present (and updated as necessary), the articles focus on the history of astronomy, bringing life to many of the people who have sought to explain what we observe above us in the night sky. Written in an engaging style, these tales of discovery will be of interest to the general reader as well as those with a science background. Fernie recounts the remarkable tales of human adventures, struggle, and follies behind some well-known and lesser-known scientific conquests of the past few centuries, such as the contentious discovery of Neptune and the misguided search for Vulcan, a proposed planet between the Sun and Mercury. Several of the articles focus on the characters themselves, such as Edmond Halley of Halley's comet fame, or the obscure Jeremiah Horrocks, who made the first realistic determination of the distance from the sun to the earth, as well as a pre-Newtonian suggestion of the existence of an attractive force now known as gravity.