On a clear night, you might see thousands of stars in the sky. Most of these stars are dozens or hundreds of light years of us. A light year is the distance that a beam of light travels in one year: around 5.88 miles billions (9.46 miles of kilometers). This means that for these stars that we see at night, it takes their light, which travels around 186,000 miles per second (or around 300,000 kilometers per second), tens or hundreds of years to reach us.
But during the day, we see only one star: the sun. It dominates the sky by day because it is so close – at around 93 million miles (or 150 million kilometers). This distance is also called an astronomical unit, and its other unit of measurement that astronomers use to record the distance in space. But even if 1 astronomical unit seems to be far away, it is still about 270 thousand closer to Alpha Centauri, the next nearest star system.
The sun is not only close – it’s also gigantic! The sun is large enough to adapt to more than a million land inside, and has more mass than 330,000 land assembled. Its light also provides the energy that allows life because we know it to flourish. For these reasons, the sun is a powerful presence in our lives. We all have a relationship with the sun, so the knowledge and the advantages and the dangers of its presence, is essential.
Fall is when most students in the United States return for a new school year after summer holidays. This back -to -school time offers a wonderful opportunity to reach students fresh out of a few months of pleasure in the sun and capture their imagination with new information on the functioning of our native star and its impact on their lives.
To this end, NASA is making efforts to educate and inform students and educators about the sun, its characteristics and its effects on our lives. The NASA Heliophysical Education Activation Team (Heat) teaches people of all ages on the sun, covering everything, how to see an eclipse in complete safety in the way of mitigating the effects of geomagnetic storms.
This often means adapting course plans for educators. By connecting NASA scientists who study heliophysics with education specialists who align equipment on the content standards from kindergarten to 12th year, the heat draws the heliophysics of the laboratory and in the class. Making the science of the sun accessible allows learners of all ages and all the backgrounds involved and enthusiastic about the discovery, and instill a thirst for a lifetime for knowledge that builds the next generation of scientists.
Since 2007, the Living with A Star (LWS) program of NASA and the cooperative programs of the Corporation for Atmospheric Research for the Advancement of Earth Systems Sciences (CPAESS) have cooperated to offer the summer heliophysical program for doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers. This program aims to promote heliophysics as an integrated science, teacher at a new generation of researchers to engage in interdisciplinary communication when they are still at the start of their career.
Within the framework of its efforts to increase awareness of the scientific and social importance of heliophysics, and to inspire both future scientists and arouse breakthrough in heliophysics as a discipline, NASA Heliophysics Education Activation Team (NASA Heat) works on a list of educational material designed to involve students in real mission data.
My NASA data, in collaboration with NASA Heat, published a new set of resources for spatial time -centered educators. My NASA data supports the use of authentic data from NASA as part of class learning equipment. These documents include course plans, mini-units (shorter activities for fast engagement), web interactive oriented to students and a longer “history card”, which deepens the survey on the phenomenon in several class periods.
These resources are designed to initiate learners with the data and observations collected during past and underway missions, in particular the solar orbiter of the European Space Agency, the NASA Parker solar probe and the solar dynamic observatory (SDO), and more.
An example of this is the educational material published to support awareness efforts focused on American solar eclipses 2023 and 2024. These materials have enabled learners to collect their own data on cloud observations and temperature during eclipses with the Eclipse Globe Observe tool. This gave them the opportunity to participate in the scientific process by contributing significantly to our understanding of the terrestrial system and the global environment.
Groups and heat not only arouse interest in science to inspire the next generation of heliophysicists. Just as amateur astronomers can provide much more data than their professional counterparts, citizen scientists can do a lot to support the same institutions that may have inspired them to take the practice of citizens’ science. This can mean anything, helping to follow sunscreens on the effects of spatial meteorological events.
These enthusiasts are also able to share the knowledge of heliophysics. Even a single person inspired to buy a telescope with the right solar filter (ISO 12312-2 international filter), put it in place in a park and teach their neighbors the sun can do incredible work, and there are many more than there are professional scientists. This means that these amateur heliophysicists can reach further than even the best official awareness.
Whether they take place in class, during conferences or in online conferences, the efforts of scientific communicators are an essential element of the work carried out at NASA. Just as scientists make new discoveries, these writers, teachers, video and video producers and awareness specialists are passionate about the realization of these discoveries accessible to the public.
All these works help inspire the scientists of tomorrow and to instill in today’s scientific citizens. The sun is a constant and magnificent presence in our lives, and it offers many reasons to be inspired, now and in the future.
