The glory of the heavens is available to everyone, and anyone, whatever their level of scientific knowledge, is able to appreciate their beauty, poetry and mystery. They are a window to the inaccessible and the unknown and have always attracted attention and aroused Man’s curiosity. This natural fascination for the universe is a precious card in the popularization of astronomy. Three centuries ago, Fontenelle knew how to exploit it in his Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, which made him famous. Many others followed him in the 18th and 19th centuries, of which Camille Flammarion may be mentioned especially. Printings of his famous Astronomie Populaire grossed 130000 copies between 1879 and 1924.

Science nowadays does not arouse the same enthusiasm as it did in Flammarion’s day. Since the development of astrophysics, astronomy has become ever more complex, making the task of those who wish to explain new developments more difficult.