Sunspots [Paperback]

The Sun is our neighbourhood star, igniting the imagination and setting the template for divinity. But in reality, it is crawling with sunspots of differing shapes, sizes, and power. Simon Barraclough (Poet in Residence at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory) is your guide to the Sun in this ambitious and energetic new collection of poems, fusing science and literature, and channelling Shakespeare, Byron, Nabokov and more. Is the Sun a god, a man, a woman, or simply a giant ball of hydrogen? Why does it tell fibs about its favourite painters? Is the Sun afraid of dying? Does it get depressed? And what does it really think about us, and the solar system it is bound to care for? In Sunspots fact, fiction, horror, humour and joy are condensed into a powerful meditation on the star that gives us life. _ PRAISE FOR SUNSPOTS Simon Barraclough illuminates solar science with a poet's gaze. His words conjure the epic journey of a photon from the Sun's heart to the retina of the eye, the blaze of sunshine in a Van Gogh canvas or the daily slide of shadows over Stonehenge and Manhattan. Sunspots is a love letter from the third planet to its parent star. Dr Marek Kukula, Public Astronomer, Royal Observatory Greenwich