Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-99) and index.

Ch. 1. Observing the farthest things in the Universe / Jay M. Pasachoff. Measuring distances in the Universe. The expansion of the Universe. Hubble's law and the age of the Universe. Far away in the Universe. New techniques and instrumentation. New technology telescopes. Telescopes in space -- Ch. 2. The cosmic background radiation / Ed Cheng. How far is far? How do we measure distances? How do distance and age relate? What physical conditions characterize the very young universe? What do we expect to see? What do we see? How do we see it? How do we make these observations credible, and how do they relate to other observations? Can we look farther than the surface of last scattering? What happened before the Big Bang and what is at distances far greater than the Hubble distance? -- Ch. 3. Quasars / Patrick S. Osmer. Discovering quasars. Quasars as extraordinary objects. Quasars as probes of the Universe. The evolution of quasars. Finding distant quasars. The space density of distant quasars.

Ch. 4. Galaxies at the limit: the epoch of galaxy formation / Hyron Spinrad. Observing distant galaxies. Modern methods for faint radio galaxy observation. More on the most-distant galaxies. Photometric evolutionary models of galaxies. Extrinsic intervening matter - modulation of the distant galaxy spectrum. Cosmology with distant radio galaxies in the near infrared.