Newbie question: What is consciousness?

Hi all,

Could anyone give me some scientific, objective introductory material on what consciousness is?

I have been struggling to find any precise explanations of what it really is, any non "intuitive" (i.e. worthless) evidence for it's existence and so forth. Apparently there's a whole science to it, which is great!

So hopefully you can point me to some basic stuff to get started on understanding this issue. Thanks a lot!