THE Greek philosopher Anaxagoras thought the sun was a ball of red-hot iron bigger than the Peloponnese. William Herschel, who discovered the planet Uranus, believed that living beings dwelt inside the sun. In misty conditions, when the sun is greatly dimmed, it is possible to see large sunspots with the naked eye. All these facts I gleaned from David Whitehouse’s book, The Sun: A biography.
The successor to his The Moon: A biography, it is a treasure trove of science, speculation and anecdote about our star. Whitehouse touches on everything from the birth of the sun in a…
