Patrick Moore has inspired generations of astronomers. He has done unparalleled service, through his handbooks, lectures and articles – not to mention his BBC programme The Sky at Night.

Over his prolific career, Patrick has witnessed, recorded and expounded a huge enlargement of our cosmic knowledge. To see this, one need only compare the present book with one of its precursors: the Guinness Book of Records in Astronomy published more than 50 years ago, at the dawn of the space age.

We owe this progress to sophisticated telescopes on the ground, and to a flotilla of instruments launched into space. The planets and moons of our Solar System are now better mapped that some parts of our Earth were before the twentieth century. An unsuspected population of trans-Neptunian objects has been revealed – telling us that the Solar System is more complex and extensive than thought hitherto. Even more important, planets have been detected around hundreds of other stars. The study of ‘extra-solar’ planets is proceeding apace: within a decade we will have discovered thousands of planetary systems, and will for the first time have evidence on just how unusual our Solar System is.

Novel technology has not only led to more powerful optical telescopes, but also to space telescopes that observe the cosmos in other wavebands out to distances exceeding 10 billion light years. We inhabit a much vaster Universe than was envisaged 50 years ago; we understand a surprising amount about how it evolved and what it contains.