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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 cold interstellar cloud to its predicted death as a bloated red giant. He covers the sunspot cycle and the nature of auroras, the solar neutrino mystery and the puzzle of coronal heating.

Whitehouse appears to have explored every possible avenue, and I can only guess at the enormous amount of research this must have required. What next, I wonder? Mars: A biography? The question, after this feat, is whether he will be able to summon the strength.