This is an activity associated with activities during Solar Week, a twice-yearly event in March and October during which classrooms are able to interact with scientists studying the Sun. Outside of Solar Week, information, activities, and resources... (View More) are archived and available online at any time. Learners will use SOHO spacecraft images of a coronal mass ejection and tracing paper to measure and then calculate the speed of the coronal mass ejection. This activity is scheduled to occur during Wednesday of Solar Week. (View Less)

In this activity, students create a scale model depicting the vertical distance from Earth’s surface to various features and objects, including Earth’s atmospheric layers, the Van Allen Radiation Belts, and geocentric satellites. Students also... (View More) compare the vertical distances to these features and objects with distances from their classroom to other common points on the ground. Includes background science information; student reading, handouts and worksheet; teacher information; and suggested extensions and adaptations for students with vision impairment. (View Less)

This is an activity about image comparison. Learners will analyze and compare images taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory. They will match four magnetic solar images, or magnetograms, to their corresponding extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, light... (View More) images by studying solar features in the images. At the end, they will recognize that areas of high magnetic activity on the Sun correspond to extreme solar activity. (View Less)

This is an activity that compares the magnetic field of the Earth to the complex magnetic field of the Sun. Using images of the Earth and Sun that have magnets attached in appropriate orientations, learners will use a handheld magnetic field... (View More) detector to observe the magnetic field of the Earth and compare it to that of the Sun, especially in sunspot areas. For each group of students, this activity requires use of a handheld magnetic field detector, such as a Magnaprobe or a similar device, a bar magnet, and ten small disc magnets. (View Less)

This is an activity about image comparison. Learners will analyze and compare two sets of images of the Sun taken by instruments on the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. With Set 1, they will observe the Sun in both a highly active and a... (View More) minimally active state, and be able to detect active regions and loops on the Sun by comparing the two images. With Set 2, they will identify areas of high magnetic activity on a magnetogram image and recognize that these areas correspond to highly active regions on the Sun. (View Less)

This is an activity about forecasting space weather. Learners will use real-time data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, to identify a variety of solar features and active regions of the Sun, and then will use these observations to... (View More) predict the probability of a space weather event. This activity will require each student or group of students to have a computer with internet access. (View Less)