David A.J. Seargent holds an MA and PhD, both in Philosophy, from the University of Newcastle NSW, where he formerly worked as a tutor in Philosophy for the Department of Community Programmes/Workers’ Educational Association external education programme. He is also a keen amateur astronomer, and is known for his observations of comets, one of which he discovered in 1978. Together with his wife Meg, David lives at The Entrance, north of Sydney on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of two astronomy books: Comets: Vagabonds of Space (Doubleday, 1982), and The Greatest Comets in History: Broom Stars & Celestial Scimitars (Springer, 2008). Currently he is the author of a regular column in Australian Sky & Telescope magazine.