The Sun from Space

The first edition of The Sun From Space, completed in 1999, focused on the early accomplishments of three solar spacecraft, SOHO, Ulysses and Yohkoh, primarily during a minimum in the Sun's 11-year cycle of magnetic activity. This comprehensive Second Edition includes the main findings of these three spacecraft over an entire activity cycle, including two minima and a maximum, and discusses the significant results of six further solar missions. It contains the relevant discoveries of the past decade, integrated into chapters completely rewritten for the purposes of this book. This provides a fresh perspective on the major topics of solar enquiry, written in an enjoyable, easily understood text accessible to all readers, from the interested layperson to the student or professional.After describing the scientific objectives of the nine solar missions and a historical perspective on studies of the Sun and heliosphere, the author presents key advances in our understanding of the solar interior, the heating of the million-degree outer atmosphere of the Sun, known as the solar corona, the origin and nature of the solar winds, the cause, prediction and propagation of explosive solar flares and coronal mass ejections, and all aspects of space-weather interactions of the Sun with the Earth, with unprotected astronauts on the Moon or Mars, and with spacecraft in outer space.