I have felt the need for a book on the theory of solar magnetic fields for some time now. Most books about the Sun are written by observers or by theorists from other branches of solar physics, whereas those on magnetohydrodynamics do not deal extensively with solar applications. I had thought of waiting a few decades before attempting to put pen to paper, but one summer Josip Kleczek encouraged an im- mediate start 'while your ideas are still fresh'. The book grew out of a postgraduate lecture course at St Andrews, and the resulting period of gestation or 'being with monograph' has lasted...

Prominences are amazing objects of great beauty whose formation, basic structure and eruption represent one of the basic unsolved problems in Solar Physics. It is now 14 years since the last book on prominences appeared (Tandberg-Hanssen, 1974), during which time much progress in our knowledge of the physics of prominences has been made, and so the time is ripe for a new text book which it is hoped will be a helpful summary of the subject for students, postdocs and solar researchers. Indeed, the last few years has seen an upsurge in interest in prominences due to high resolution ground-and...

Much of the excitement in modern Solar Physics has come from the realisation that the Sun is a plasma and that this plasma is interacting with the magnetic field in a wide variety of subtle ways. As well as being of great interest in their own right the observed plasma phenomena on the Sun are of much wider importance, since they reveal to us details of basic phenomena that are expected to be occurring throughout the universe. It was with this in mind that 173 solar physicists from 17 countries gathered together in Bangalore with an air of anticipation. We were not disappointed as we received...

This volume presents the lecture notes of the 24th Advanced Course of the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy in March 1994 at Les Diablerets. In three lectures on magnetohydrodynamics, on kinetic plasma physics and on particle acceleration leading experts describe the physical basis of their subjects and extend the discussion to several applications in modern problems of astrophysics. In style and presentation the texts are well-suited for graduate work in plasma astrophysics, one of the very important tools of modern astronomy. The themes developed in this book will be helpful in...