Dr. Bryan Penprase received a B.S. in Physics and an M.S. in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 1985 and his Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics in 1992 from the University of Chicago. Dr. Penprase was a Predoctoral Research Fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and an NRC Postdoctoral Researcher at IPAC/Caltech in Pasadena. Dr. Penprase has been a professor of Physics and Astronomy and Director of the Brackett Observatory at Pomona College since 1993, and recently has become a Professor of Science at the Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and a Visiting Associate at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Penprase was a visiting fellow at Downing College, Cambridge, at the Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and as a JPL Summer faculty fellow. Dr. Penprase conducts observational astrophysics projects with the Las Campanas Observatory, the Keck Telescope and Hubble Space telescope, among other facilities. He has worked extensively in many areas of astrophysics, primarily in observational astronomy related to the interstellar medium and star formation. Dr. Penprase's research in astronomy and astrophysics has taken him around the world, to observe with telescopes such as the Australian AAT, the observatories of CTIO and ESO in Chile, Caltech's telescopes on Mauna Kea and at Palomar, and the Nordic Optical telescope in La Palma, Spain, and telescopes in Taiwan, India and Thailand. He has given astronomy tours and talks since 1986 at venues that include the Yerkes Observatory, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, as well as archaeoastronomy and eclipse tours in the Southwestern US, Indonesia, India, China and Wyoming.

Thoroughly updated second edition of a well-reviewed and widely used text

New additions includes material drawn from the authors fieldwork in various places around the world, as well as an improved index

Concise explanation of constellation lore from around the world, organized by cultures

A graphic and wide-ranging discussion of models of the universe, which includes schematic figures from over a dozen cultures

Precise and compelling descriptions of a wide range of celestial monuments with quantitative analysis of the significance of some of the monuments from the perspective of a trained astrophysicist

Includes supplementary material: [...]

Our Experience of the Sky and Star Knowledge.- A World of Constellations in the Night Sky.- Creation Stories from Around the World.- World Systems: Models of the Universe Throughout Time.- Stars that Bind: Civilization, Calendars, and the Sky, Modern Timekeeping and the Development of the Science of Time, Celestial Architecture: Monuments of the Sky.- The Archaeoastronomy of Modern Civilization.- The Development of Modern Cosmology.- Concluding Thoughts.