I'll be teaching a History of Astronomy course to college juniors and seniors who have passed an intro-astro course. (The public can enroll too. It's held Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 12:10-1 PM, August 27 – December 10.) It's a "light math" (graphs, algebra and geometry) general-education science course.

What's the best book? Many books cover the History of Astronomy, but none is a "textbook" replete with end-of-chapter questions, etc. I like the recent "Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology", by John North, but it's out of print. I also like "Discovery of the Universe", by Gerard de Vaucouleurs, which is remarkably good up to its time, but that was 1957. What are your favorites? Which books are undesirable, and why? Or, should each student have a different book, and discuss the different angles in class?

What events, phenomena and principles call for special attention? Here are some that occur to me, but participants should suggest more, and explain why some of these aren't worth much special attention in this course.

-- The Galileo Affair
-- Measuring Distances
-- Naming celestial objects
-- Classifying celestial objects
-- Exploratory science, especially sky surveys
-- William Herschel's principle that, once something has been discovered with a big telescope, it can be recognized in smaller ones. Discovery requires distinguishing something from the welter of background objects. -- The Neptune Scandal
-- Le Carte du Ciel
-- Pickering's Harem
-- Observing power drives discovery – mostly telescope technology, though also Tycho and computers.
-- Amateurs, as in Tim Ferris's book "Seeing in the Dark"
-- Astronomy First: What happens first in astronomy, and then spreads. For example, the first graph was astronomical. Astronomers wrestling with the personal equation (including a bit of scandal under Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne) led to experimental psychology.
-- History of Astronomy on the WWW, by Bruce R. Mehlman
-- Cosmology: Hubble, Lemaitre, Gamow, Hoyle et al., etc.
-- The Space Race
-- Apollo to the Moon

What is the mid-point of the History of Astronomy? That is, what date marks half of the history-so-far done, half to go? I think that's probably in the 1800s. This helps the course end up covering the full topic.

What should this course leave out, and why?