[NASA] Helio Highlights: October 2025

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3. Helio Highlights: October…

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• Framework for Heliophysics Education
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5 min read

Helio Highlights: October 2025

5 Min Read

Helio Highlights: October 2025

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NASA Education Specialist Christine Milotte demonstrates heliophysics activities during a teacher professional development event hosted by the NASA Heliophysics Education Activation Team (HEAT) at the Dallas Arboretum, Saturday, April 6, 2024.

Credits:
NASA/Keegan Barber

The Sun and Our Lives

On a clear night, you might see thousands of stars in the sky. Most of these stars are dozens or hundreds of light years away from us. A

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is the distance a beam of light travels in a year: about 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers). This means that for those stars we see at night, it takes their light, which travels at

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(or about 300 thousand kilometers per second), dozens or hundreds of years to reach us.

But in the daytime, we only see one star: the Sun. It dominates the daytime sky because it is so close – about 93 million miles (or 150 million kilometers) away. That distance is also called one

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, and its another unit of measurement astronomers use to record distance in space. But even if 1 astronomical unit seems like a long way, it’s still about 270 thousand times closer than

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, the next nearest star system.

The Sun isn’t just close – it’s also gigantic! The Sun is large enough to

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inside it, and has

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put together. Its light also provides the energy which allows life as 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 knowing about it, and about the benefits and hazards of its presence, is essential.

Teaching About the Sun

Autumn is when most students in the United States return for a new school year after summer vacation. This back-to-school time offers a wonderful opportunity to reach students fresh off of a few months of fun in the Sun and capture their imaginations with new information about how our native star works and how it impacts their lives.

To that end, NASA conducts efforts to educate and inform students and educators about the Sun, its features, and the ways it impacts our lives. NASA’s

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(HEAT) teaches people of all ages about the Sun, covering everything from how to safely view an eclipse to how to mitigate the effects of geomagnetic storms.

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This “Our Dynamic Sun” banner is one of many educational outreach products offered by NASA HEAT. It uses imagery of the Sun at different wavelengths of light to demonstrate the features of our nearest star, and features information about how the Sun interacts with the rest of the Solar System.

NASA HEAT

This often means tailoring lesson plans for educators. By connecting NASA scientists who study Heliophysics with education specialists who align the material to K-12 content standards, HEAT gets Heliophysics out of the lab and into the classroom. Making Sun science accessible lets learners of all ages and backgrounds get involved in and excited about the discovery, and instills a lifelong thirst for knowledge that builds the next generation of scientists.

Since 2007, NASA’s

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(LWS) program and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research’s

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(CPAESS) have cooperated to offer the

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program for doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars. This program aims to foster heliophysics as an integrated science, teaching a new generation of researchers to engage in cross-disciplinary communication while they are still in the early days of their career.

One Way to Get Involved

As part of its efforts to increase awareness of the scientific and social importance of heliophysics, and to both inspire future scientists and spark breakthroughs in heliophysics as a discipline, the NASA

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(NASA HEAT) is working on a slate of educational materials designed to get students involved with real-world mission data.

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, in collaboration with NASA HEAT, has released a new set of resources for educators centered around space weather. My NASA Data supports the use of authentic NASA data as part of classroom learning materials. These materials include lesson plans, mini-lessons (shorter activities for quick engagement), student-facing web-based interactives, and a longer “story map,” which deepens the investigation of the phenomenon over multiple class periods.

These resources are designed to engage learners with data and observations collected during both past and ongoing missions, including the European Space Agency’s

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, NASA’s

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and

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(SDO), and more.

One example of this is the educational material published to support outreach efforts focusing on the 2023 and 2024 American solar eclipses. These materials allowed learners to collect their own data on cloud and temperature observations during the eclipses with the

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tool. This gave them the chance to participate in the scientific process by contributing meaningfully to our understanding of the Earth system and global environment.

New Ways to Engage

Groups like HEAT don’t just spark interest in science for the sake of inspiring the next generation of heliophysicists. Just like amateur astronomers can bring in a lot more data than their professional counterparts,

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can do a lot to support the same institutions that may have inspired them to take up the practice of citizen science. This can mean anything from helping to track sunspots to reporting on the effects of space weather events.

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2023 Partial Solar Eclipse Viewing at Camino Real Marketplace with the View the Santa Barbara Astronomical Unit. Events like this, which can take place during major events such as eclipses or during impromptu circumstances, offer an excellent opportunity for the public to get involved in and excited about heliophysics.

Photo by Chuck McPartlin

These enthusiasts are also adept at sharing knowledge of heliophysics. Even just one person inspired to buy a telescope with the

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(international standard ISO 12312-2), set it up in a park, and teach their neighbors about the Sun can do amazing work, and there are a lot more of them than there are professional scientists. That means these amateur heliophysicists can reach farther than even the best official outreach.

Whether they take place in the classroom, at conferences, or in online lectures, the efforts of science communicators are a vital part of the work done at NASA. Just as scientists make new discoveries, these writers, teachers, audio and video producers, and outreach specialists are passionate about making those discoveries accessible to the public.

All of this work helps to inspire the scientists of tomorrow, and to instill wonder in the citizen scientists of today. The Sun is a constant and magnificent presence in our lives, and it offers plenty of reasons to be inspired, both now and in the future.

Additional Resources

Lesson Plans & Educator Guides

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Explore the
Sun Toolkit

The Explore the Sun Toolkit includes postcards, a banner, and slides ideal for informal educators and community events to bring the wonder of NASA Solar Science to your community.

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Sun as a Star
Activities,
Grades 5-12

Educator guide consisting of eight roughly one-hour, hands-on activities adapted from a classroom environment for after-school audiences, and which will work for a variety of audiences.

Interactive Resources

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My NASA Data

My NASA Data, a NASA Langley Research Center Science Directorate project, supports the use of authentic NASA Earth data for educators and learners in grades 3-12.

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NASA Space
Place Sun Page

Videos, games, activities and more for engaging younger students in a variety of space science topics, including resources on the Sun which range from hands-on activities to detailed lessons.

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Student HelioViewer:
Solar Data Interactive

A user-friendly interactive where students can access NASA data collected by spacecraft about the Sun and its features, including solar flares, magnetic fields, sunspots, and CMEs.

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Make a Solar
Viewer Activity

Create a simple solar viewer, or pinhole viewer, which works by projecting the image of the Sun through a small hole, to safely observe the Sun with just some paper and aluminum foil.

Webinars & Slide Decks

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HBY & Math #3:
The Sun Touches Everything

From agriculture to economics, the Sun touches all parts of our lives, especially with the sunlight that allows crops to grow. This webinar looks at sunlight through the year and how it changes.

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The Solar Cycle As
Seen From Space

Roughly 2-minute video which uses views of the Sun taken by a variety of spacecraft to show how different features of the Sun vary between solar minimum and solar maximum.

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