This is an online lesson 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... (View More) resources are archived and available online at any time. This is an activity about measurements of solar activity. Learners will observe an image of the Sun and sketch major features, plot data to begin to recognize patterns of solar activity, look for long-term patterns in graphed data, compare X-ray and visible light images of the Sun to find solar features common to both sets of images, and make a prediction of what the Sun will look like in a visible light image after observing an X-ray image taken on the same day. This activity is scheduled to occur during Monday of Solar Week. (View Less)

The 9-session NASA Family Science Night program emables middle school children and their families to discover the wide variety of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics being performed at NASA and in everyday life. Family Science Night... (View More) programs explore various themes on the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and the Universe through fun, hands-on activities, including at-home experiments. Instructions for obtaining the facilitator's guide are available on the Family Science Night site. (View Less)

This is an activity about the period of the Sun's rotation. Learners will use image of the Sun from the SOHO spacecraft and a transparent latitude/ longitude grid called a Stonyhurst Disk to track the motion of sunspots in terms of degrees of... (View More) longitude. Using this angular motion measurement, learners will then calculate the sunspot’s angular velocity in order to determine the rotation period of the Sun. This activity requires access to the internet to obtain images from the SOHO image archive. This is Activity 4 of the Space Weather Forecast curriculum. (View Less)

This is an activity about seasonal variations in day length. Learners will graph the number of daylight hours in each month in cities around the world and compare results. They will also gain an understanding of the meaning of the term equinox... (View More) through review of the graphed data. This is Activity 6 in the Great Explorations in Math and Science (GEMS) guide titled Real Reasons for Seasons: Sun-Earth Connections. The resource guide is available for purchase from the Lawrence Hall of Science. This activity requires use of an overhead projector and colored transparency pens. (View Less)

This is an activity about seasons. Learners will analyze monthly temperature data from various cities around the globe in order to dispel the misconception that the distance between Earth and Sun may be responsible for the seasons. This is Activity... (View More) 5 in the Great Explorations in Math and Science (GEMS) guide titled Real Reasons for Seasons: Sun-Earth Connections. The resource guide is available for purchase from the Lawrence Hall of Science. This activity requires use of an overhead projector, colored transparency pens, and a globe. (View Less)

This is an activity about the solar activity cycle. Learners will construct a graph to identify a pattern of the number of observed sunspots and the number of coronal mass ejections emitted by the Sun over a fifteen year time span. A graphing... (View More) calculator is recommended, but not required, for this activity. This is the second activity in the Solar Storms and You: Exploring the Wind from the Sun educator guide. (View Less)