Flash! not only tells how the truth was reached slowly but secure along a narrow trail, but also describes the development of the various instruments and observatories on earth and in space used to locate minuscule sources of light, radio and gamma-ray waves in the sky.

As if present in person, Schilling portrays the last moments of a dying star many billions of light years away from the earth. What was a local energy explosion comparable to the Big Bang reached our solar system after a journey lasting billions of years and is no more than an unsightly bleep on a screen or a vanishing pinpoint in the sky.

Most revealing of all is the glimpse of the astronomical research ‘kitchen’ Schilling gives his readers, of a kitchen in which the cooks seem to be elbowing, even banishing one another from the stove. A kitchen, moreover, in which the cooks sometimes produce misbegotten dishes that can be whisked off the table just in time.

Flash! is a book for everyone fascinated by the universe and its processes, in which distance and energy assume incredible proportions – which Schilling describes most entertainingly; for anyone intrigued by the detective work of astronomers – many of whom are quoted in Flash!; and for anyone interested in the techniques and instruments that help keep the universe under observation, of which a large number are set out in this vividly written book.