Jay M. Pasachoff (1943–2022)

The Nearest Star: The Surprising Science of our Sun, 2nd Edition by Leon Goulb and Jay M Pasachoff is a comprehensive look at our sun. Goulb is a Senior Astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and has been studying the sun since the mid-1970s Skylab missions. Pasachoff is the Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College. He has been on fifty-eight solar eclipse expeditions He his the author of the the undergraduate text book, The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium. He has received the Education Prize from the American Astronomical Society and the Jules Janssen Prize from the Societe Astronomique de France.

The Nearest Star is a comprehensive look at our sun for the layman. The authors keep the math to a minimum and stress why studying our sun is important in learning about stars. Special consideration is given to the outer atmosphere of the sun, since it is the only place we can study a star's outer atmosphere. Although some book is easy to follow other parts, particularly the parts about the corona and neutrinos, tend to go deeper into science than the average reader may be ready for.

There is plenty of good information and interesting information about the sun that most people probably haven't heard before. The sun is so dense that it takes 100,000 years for a light to move from the core of the sun to the surface. Studying the sun presents some challenges. A reflector telescope can receive 50,000 watts per square meter. Even if the mirror absorbs (rather than perfectly reflecting) a few percent of this energy the heat will be enough distort the mirror. One way to solve this problem is the Vacuum Tower Solar Telescope. The entire telescope is a vacuum chamber floating in a bath of mercury to reduce vibrations. The latest satellite efforts to study the sun are also covered in detail along with the different methods of observation from visible light to x-rays.

The Nearest Star is a very comprehensive look at out sun although parts may be above the non-science minded. There is also a nice tie into the earth and the effect the sun and changes the sun has on our planet. Ice ages, different layers of the atmosphere, and the Van Allen Belts are covered. One of the most frightening aspects of the sun in ancient times, a solar eclipse, now turns out to be the best time to study the sun.

Reading this book is the most that I have learned about astronomy since college and maybe even more than I learned in six semester hours of astronomy classes. I grew up in the 1970s reading about all new discoveries from the probes we landed to Mars and the Voyagers that are long gone. I have always been science minded and for me to find something that I actually learn from with resorting to mind bending mathematics is a rare thing. The Nearest Star does an excellent job at presenting the latest scientific information in a manner that a non-scientist can understand.
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The sun is, for us here on Earth, the most important star: the one that dominates our world, essential to our lives, as well as what will ultimately destroy our planet.

Golub and Pasachoff lay out not just our knowledge of our star, but how we gained that knowledge. It has been a long process, gaining speed only in the last couple of centuries, and a far more convoluted path than at first glance it might appear. That's because the Earth and Sun interact, and it isn't always apparent what the cause of a particular effect is. Climate in particular is the product of a number of interacting and chaotic causes. Our orbit is elliptical, not circular; the Earth precesses on its axis; the Sun itself has cycles, the eleven-year sunspot cycle as well as other, longer cycles--and once we know all this, there's still more to understand.

We look at the Sun, and we see a great, glowing ball. It doesn't look complicated at all. Yet even before we had more advanced instruments, eclipses and the telescope let us discover and begin to study the photosphere of the Sun. The authors make the tale of how we made crucial discoveries, as well as the substance of those discoveries themselves, exciting and compelling.

The subject matter is at times demanding, but the writing is clear and understandable.

Recommended for anyone who enjoys good science writing.

I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley.… (més)