In 2010, NASA and the National Science Foundation asked the National Research Council to assemble a committee of experts to develop an integrated national strategy that would guide agency investments in solar and space physics for the years 2013-2022. That strategy, the result of nearly 2 years of effort by the survey committee, which worked with more than 100 scientists and engineers on eight supporting study panels, is presented in the 2013 publication, Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society. This booklet, designed to be accessible to a broader audience of policymakers and the interested public, summarizes the content of that report.

The study of extraterrestrial magnetic fields is a relatively new one, confirmation of the existance of the first such field (that of our Sun) having come a s late as 1908. In the past 30 years a great ammount of knowledge has been accumulated on Cosmic Magnetism, which has turned out to be a truly fascinating topic for study. Percy Seymour's book is the first to deal with the topic in a non-mathematical way, and he offers a fine introduction to his subject. The first three chapters consolidate our knowledge on magnetism in general and the magnetic field of the Earth, as well as discussing the reasons for studying astronomy and cosmic magnetism in particular. The remainder of the book is devoted to the main areas of cosmic magnetism - solar, plantetary and interplanetary fields, fields in stars and pulsars, fields of the milky way and fields in other galaxies. Cosmic Magnetism in an ideal book for sixth-formers and undergraduates studying physics or astronomy and will also appeal to amateur astronomers. as previous work on this topic has been 'hidden' in specialised academic journals.

High resolution observations of quiet sun magnetic fields have been made at Sacramento Peak Observatory using the Lockheed Universal Filter. The existence of 'salt and pepper' fields described by other observers has been called into question. (Author).

The closest star to the Earth, the Sun, is a large ball of ionized gas called plasma. The Sun has intense variable magnetic fields which are the drivers of most solar mag-netic activity. An overview of the solar magnetic field, its most important properties, along with a description of the solar wind and solar transient events are presented in this chapter. The solar wind represents the medium by which the Sun extends its atmosphere swiftly into the vastness of the solar system. The solar wind in change carves out a region of interstellar space, several times the orbit of the most distant planet in dimension, known as the heliosphere. The heliosphere is the region of space that is dominated by the solar magnetic field, which is drawn out into space by the solar wind, its a bubble in the space. Solar maximum and solar minimum are phases through which, the Sun's magnetic field has been found to flip roughly every 11 years.

Magnetic fields are responsible for much of the variability and structuring in the universe, but only on the Sun can the basic magnetic field related processes be explored in detail. While several excellent textbooks have established a diagnostic foundation for exploring the physics of unmagnetized stellar atmospheres through spectral analysis, no corresponding treatise for magnetized stellar atmospheres has been available. The present monograph fills this gap. The theoretical foundation for the diagnostics of stellar magnetism is developed from first principles in a comprehensive way, both within the frameworks of classical physics and quantum field theory, together with a presentation of the various solar applications. This textbook can serve as an introduction to solar and stellar magnetism for astronomers and physicists at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level and will also become a resource book for more senior scientists with a general interest in cosmic magnetic fields.

Leading experts present the current state of knowledge of the subject of magnetoconvection from the viewpoint of applied mathematics.