This beautifully written work by one of Americas top solar experts provides an easy-to-read yet thorough guide to our Sun and its impact on planet Earth. It is highly recommended to anyone interested in the Sun and space weather.

An excerpt: In a world of warmth and light and living things we soon forget that we are surrounded by a vast universe that is cold and dark and deadly dangerous, just beyond our door. On a starry night, when we look out into the darkness that lies around us, the view can be misleading in yet another way: for the brightness and sheer number of stars, and their chance groupings into familiar constellations, make them seem much nearer to each other, and to us, that in truth they are. And every one of them--each twinkling, like a diamond in the sky--is a white-hot sun, much like our own. The nearest stars in our own galaxy--the Milky Way-- are more than a million times further away from us than our star, the Sun.

Contents: Our Dependence on Sun Suns Inconstancy Voyages of Discovery in an Age of Exploration Sun as a Star Perpetual Combustion How Constant Is and Was Sun? Metered Sunshine First Who Saw Face of Sun Photosphere Sunspots Suns Chromosphere and Corona SOLAR WIND & SOLAR VARIABILITY Explosive Solar Flares Solar Prominences and Filaments Coronal Mass Ejections NEAR-EARTH ENVIRONMENT A Protected Planet Air Above Us Changes on Way to Top Troposphere Stratosphere Mesosphere and Thermosphere Ionized Upper Atmosphere End of Atmosphere Into Magnetosphere Form and Function of Magnetosphere Paths that Particles Follow Captive Particles in Magnetosphere Earths Radiation Belts Plasmasphere Heliosphere Cruising Heliosphere FLUCTUATIONS IN SOLAR RADIATION AT EARTH Changes in Total Solar Irradiance Variability in Different Parts of Spectrum Effects of Suns Rotation Effects of Earths Orbit VARIATION IN FLOW OF PARTICLES AT EARTH Nature of Arriving Particles Solar Sources Particles Borne Outward in CMEs Particles from Solar Flare Solar Wind Plasma Characteristics of Slow Solar Wind Streams High-Speed Solar Wind Streams Sectors in Suns Extended Magnetic Field Pushing and Shoving on Way to Earth When Solar Particles Strike Earth Through Guarded Gates Magnetic Reconnection Effects of Changes in Earths Magnetic Field Cosmic Rays Fate of Cosmic Rays IMPACTS OF SOLAR VARIABILITY Solar Causes, Terrestrial Impacts, and Societal Effects Impacts on Near-Earth Space Magnetic Storms A