Despite the cheeky title, the only bodies involved here are heavenly ones – but of the strictly astronomical kind. Why is Uranus Upside Down? is a popular, but quite serious, survey of the current state of astronomy, based on listeners' questions posed during the author's regular radio stints: "How do satellites stay up there in space?", "What is the difference between an asteroid and a meteorite?", and so on.

Fred Watson is astronomer-in-charge of the Anglo-Australian Observatory at Coonabarabran in New South Wales, and he has spent years as the resident astronomer on ABC radio.

Watson gives the lay reader good, clear explanations of astronomy from the Big Bang, through the formation of our Solar System, forward to the death of the Sun, and on to the end of the universe.

Getting into more science-fictional territory, Watson looks at questions such as "Without air to push against, how do thrusters change the direction of a spacecraft?" and "What is the space elevator and will it work?"

Even queries of an ethical nature, such as "Why should governments spend money on astronomy and space research when there are so many other needy causes?" are tackled. In response to this one, Watson points out that Australian spending on astronomy is very modest: "The public money spent on staging the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games would have been enough at the then-current budgets to run the whole of Australian astronomy for a hundred years."