This book was published in 1940 and before you say "oh, how can this be relevant today" read on. I picked it up in paperback - god knows where from, but by the time I got around to reading it I had not long rekindled the astronomy bug and was reading a lot of texts.
The main attraction of the book is the description of the experiments that led to different discoveries about the nature of the sun and many of its properties, starting from the assumptions that the sun couldn't be more than several thousand years old or had it been made of coal the fires would long be out! Progressing through early stages of physical and electrical properties. I found many of the tests and the assumptions drawn from them to be ingenious. If you're feeling inventive at all and want to take a different tack on astronomy I can recommend reading literature that comes from the early era of electricity and radio- the experiments back then (and usually the language as well) are quite easy to understand as the lexicon hasn't been invaded by jargon.
Indeed, reading many of the early works of Nicola Tesla have furnished me with a far greater understanding of how electricity, inductance and capacitance actually works- I believe I could build my own AC motor or electrical generators if I had to!
I think it would be of interest to keen solar observers and perhaps other astronomy buffs - after all which other star can we observe as closely?!
This book can legally be obtained digitally from:
http://www.archive.org/details/birth...thoft032626mbp
