Science: Organizer of Heaven

(See front cover) Astronomy deals with Earth, and with everything discernible beyond Earth. Its task is detecting, locating, describing and classifying countless millions of diverse objects—meteors, planets, comets, stars, shining streams of gas. dark clouds of cosmic debris, galaxies and super-galaxies glimmering across unimaginable gulfs of space. To avoid duplication of effort, to facilitate exchange of information and encourage cooperative research, astronomy's huge and complex task was years ago brought under the scrutiny and partial control of an international body. The International Astronomical Union, undisturbed by terrestrial wars and politics,...