Integral Educational Program

Imaging Science for the Visual Generation

The relationship between the Sun and the Earth is an important educational theme in space physics. The topic is featured in high school science curricula, and provides an excellent focus for teaching a wide range of math and science concepts.

Solar Connections offers an exciting opportunity to build on this effort. The connections between the ultraviolet and extreme ultraviolet output of the Sun and its impact on the upper atmosphere of the Earth resonate with topical public concern over ozone depletion and global change. This awareness is an ideal foundation on which to build students' knowledge of the physics and chemistry of the least-explored region of the Earth's atmosphere and, ultimately, to increase their understanding of the relative importance of natural and human impacts on climate.

Solar Connections will:

• Allow students to see unique images of a variety of phenomena in "electric space" and the impact that this violent, charged space environment around the Earth has on life on the ground. Vivid, first-time images taken close to the Sun will dramatize the powerful processes that bombard the Earth.

• Solar Connections will use new tools to give students access to this new world - over the Internet, through CD-ROMs, through hands-on activity with spacecraft, and through science outreach.

• The program will use new management modes - investigator-led, through partnerships with industry, NASA, and academia - to open up the techniques and challenges of space investigation to many curious young minds.

A strong program of educational outreach will thus be a central feature of Solar Connections.

Click here for a larger, JPEG representation of the "Electric Space" figure at the top of the page.

Solar Connections: A Science Initiative for NASA Space Physics

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