New Eyes on the Sun by John Wilkinson

If you follow space news from day to day, you 're probably acquainted with a couple of satellites that exclusively stare at the sun. If you're looking to find out more about those more famous satellites and also about some fascinating historical missions, then "New Eyes on the Sun" is just the book you need.

In this book you will find out more about the Sun itself, it's structure and physical characteristics and how you can observe the Sun, but more importantly you will get to read about how scientists have found some of the things that we nowadays take for granted and wouldn't ever wonder about how do they know it.

Observing the Sun from space isn't anything new in this space age, but there are new satellites being sent to orbit every couple of years to find out more about some aspect of the sun.
For example you can find out more about the Solar Dynamics Observatory. That satellite has several instruments looking at the Sun in different wavelengths and it gives a lot of information about sunspots and coronal holes etc. However if you'd want to know what's coming up from the other side of the Sun in a week, you'd have to look at data from another set of satellites - STEREO, two satellites that enable us to get a full view of the Sun and it makes it possible to see how active the Sun is in general, and not just on the side that we can see from Earth. Also if you want to read about SOHO, the satellite for which the mission was extended to December 2016, you'll find a lot of information here.

You can ofcourse read about many more satellites of different countries and for different purposes.

It's very informative and the insight you get into the satellites is great - it's not too technical and at just the right length with plenty of interesting details. Also if you're just looking to find out more about our closest star, it works great for that as well.