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Bob Berman鈥檚 funny and fascinating tales cast light on the unknown life of our favourite star in The Sun鈥檚 Heartbeat

There are jaw-dropping moments in every astronomy lecturer鈥檚 life, but you don鈥檛 expect them to come from observations of carbon-based life forms. Once, when warning of the dangers of looking directly at the sun during an upcoming eclipse, a woman phoned into Bob Berman鈥檚 radio show and asked: 鈥淚f these eclipses are so dangerous, why do we keep having them?鈥�

It is easy to laugh, but there is a serious point here: most people are startlingly ignorant of some basic facts about the universe they inhabit. Berman鈥檚 pitch-perfect book goes a long way to answering the questions you thought were too dumb to ask, but it does much more than simply provide facts.

Berman is a master storyteller, whose passion and enthusiasm for astronomy has served the public well for decades. A career spent as a broadcaster and a columnist for magazines such as Astronomy and Discover has given him both breadth and depth of knowledge, which he handles with a deft touch.

In his discussion of how we came to understand the chemical composition of the sun, for example, he introduces us to two chemists obsessed by the colours emitted by heated chemicals. When a neighbour鈥檚 house burned down, they watched through their spectroscope to observe the lead and copper pipes become hot enough to radiate blue-white and turquoise light.

As well as its many laugh-out-loud moments, The Sun鈥檚 Heartbeat also offers startling and serious insights into the sun鈥檚 importance, looking at skin cancer and the trillion-dollar danger posed by solar storms. It also explains the importance of your body鈥檚 solar-fuelled vitamin D production and why the sun鈥檚 role in climate change means that our carbon emissions really are something to worry about.

Berman waxes most lyrical over the staggering nature of a total solar eclipse. He calls totality a 鈥渟acred experience鈥�, and warns that photographs are a pale reflection of the real-life phenomenon. You will leave the pages of this book desperate to see an eclipse 鈥� and the northern lights 鈥� for yourself.

But don鈥檛 despair if a trip to extreme latitudes is a distant dream. There are less elusive phenomena too: halos, sun dogs and circumzenithal arcs, for example. And next time you see a rainbow, revel in the fact that not only is it not there unless someone is observing it, the person standing next to you is seeing an entirely different arc.

Read this and you will never look at the sun in the same way again. Hopefully, after Berman鈥檚 tutelage, you won鈥檛 look at it at all, except through shade no. 12 welding goggles.