I visited Moore in his large house by the sea in Sussex when he was semi-retired. He greeted me with exuberance, announcing he was the fastest speaker in England and the most right-wing. He did a brilliant interview about the Moon, then played me the xylophone after which his factotum, Woody, announced serenely that lunch was ready and, if ‘Sir would like to do up his fly’, we could repair to the dining room.

Watson came to Australia decades ago having trained on the engineering side as well as in the bewildering frontiers of astrophysics. He, too, was drawn to the public communication of science, and he did so across all media, but with the gentle flair and clarity that kept the excitement while in no way being didactic or bombastic, as Moore and some other star jockeys were wont to be.

‘So, what is an astronomer?’ he asks in one of his short chapters and offers a glimpse of the nerdy, anorak-clad stereotype:

‘Oh, look, there’s a nebula. Didn’t see that yesterday. Better give it a name. How about 141244+031227B? What? Used that last week? Damn. Oh wait – it’s gone. Smudge on the lens. Where’s the Windex?’ And so on.

No, he insists, and he’s right. It’s not like stamp- or star-collecting. It’s about the science, trying to answer big questions by looking for evidence. In the last century, that effort has been one of the great triumphs of modern intellectual life. And that is what this marvellous book is all about.

Why a ‘User’s Guide To the Universe?’ This comes from its handy and easy structure, with twenty-one chapters ranging from a set on the Earth and our precinct, another on the planets, then the wider universe, and, finally, the bigger challenges of astrophysics with those black holes, dark matter and energy, and even ET – where is he or she?

Opposite hemispheres of the asteroid Eros, shown in a pair of mosaics made from images taken by the U.S. Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Shoemaker spacecraft on February 23, 2000 (photograph via John Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory/NASA)

There are surprises throughout, written in Fred’s typically conversational style. Did you know that Mr Dennis M. Hope of Garnerville, Nevada, claims to own the Moon (he can show you the paperwork) or that the near-Earth asteroid Eros (also claimed by a bloke from Idaho) contains more platinum, gold, silver, zinc, aluminium, and other metals than you could ever extract from the Earth’s crust? It’s worth, conservatively, is about $30 trillion. Or, did you know that one theory of our moon’s origins is that it ‘somehow popped out of northern Australia’? These nuggets, far from being ephemera for your pub quiz, are the asides in lively discussions of the future of space industry and the origins of our planets and their moons.

I had forgotten that the reason why we must adjust our clocks by leap seconds every few years is that the Moon is moving slowly away from us, diminishing its effect on Earth’s rotation. Or did I ever know this? Nor, did I know, despite have covered umpteen space shots, that the cost of sterilising spacecraft, for every US$1 billion spent on a mission, is US$100 million. It’s not cheap trying to protect the cosmos from our germs.

Then there is the depiction of quantities in terms we can imagine: yes, there is plenty of water on Mars, but then, what if the amount at the southern pole alone were to melt? Watson informs us, citing the source, that it ‘would produce enough water to flood the entire planet to an average depth of 11 metres’. Looks like enough water to keep us going should we one day try to live there.

While writing and broadcasting these ideas, Watson has been helping to run the Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring Mountain near Coonabarabran, working on his own special field of mapping the cosmos by using the optical fibres that have revolutionised this field of research he has helped pioneer – and, of course, playing his acoustic guitar and singing his own songs about Uranus and suchlike.

This is a book to keep close by and to consult whenever one of the main topics of astronomy comes by. It gives you a briefing with not just information, history, and anecdote, but the big ideas as well. It is a joy to read and fun to quote. It also shows why Watson was given the Eureka Prize for the communication of science in 2006.

Unlike Patrick Moore in his day, Watson is entirely comfortable speaking in pubs or junior classrooms, all the while maintaining his research and investigations at the frontlines of science. And he has a Yorkshireman’s sense of fun. Who else would tell you, and apparently it’s true, that the high-powered nuclear outfit CERN in Switzerland has an Animal Shelter for Retired Computer Mice near its cafeteria, complete with water, straw, and ‘protection from marauding computer cats’? Lovely!