Chasing the Sun Author: Richard Cohen Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 978-0-74325-928-6 Price: £30 (Hb), 681pp
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Our Sun is two-faced. When we, the scientific and observational astronomers, look at the Sun all we see is a star. This physical entity is a massive sphere of gas radiating its centrally generated energy at a near constant rate throughout the Solar System, a system that it dominates gravitationally. Our Sun is a close-by, easily probed exemplar of a typical main sequence star, an accessible test-bed for the theories of stellar evolutionists, planetary cosmogonists, cosmo-chemists, nuclear particle astrophysicists, sunspot magnetohydrodynamicists and those fascinated by space plasmas. Historically we have struggled to measure how far away it is, to measure its photospheric temperature and to ascertain the source of its energy. Over time these problems have been the sharp spurs to our astrophysical advancement.

Richard Cohen’s Sun is different. Cohen is a journalist, a publisher and a professor of creative writing. The Sun he writes about is the muse of novelists and poets, the guide star of navigators, the object of reverence of a host of primitive religions, the light of our darkness and the inspiration of painters. Claude Monet started the Impressionist movement by painting sunrise over Le Havre. Where would John Betjeman’s Miss Joan Hunter Dunn have been without the being ‘burnished by Aldershot sun’? D H Lawrence insisted on the sexual regenerative potency of the Sun, medics berated it as a potential stimulant of skin cancer, musicians insisted that the Sun is best represented by the key of C major, clerics used the pagan feast of Sol Invictus as the birthday of Jesus and town planers use the sky path of the Sun as the guide to their city layouts.

Cohen’s book is inspirational. It masterfully pulls the mere astronomer away from narrow mindedness. It should help us share our meagre understandings of our central star with the multitude of other people who appreciate the Sun in vastly different ways. Read this book. You will enjoy every page and it will broaden your horizons hugely.

David W Hughes