One of the questions we get most often is, “how can I see the aurora?” The answer is surprisingly complicated and can be difficult to explain to students. In order to help explain, we made a collaborative, role-playing card game! With a special deck of printable cards and a dash of imagination, players work together… Read More »Aurora Chasers: The Game!
Humans have looked to the sky since time immemorial, and noticed a strange purplish arc with stripy green features that runs east to west and appears closer to the equator than regular aurora. In the mid-2010s, aurora chasers began to collectively photograph and speculate about the phenomenon, which did not yet have a formal scientific… Read More »What’s in a name? The meaning of STEVE
Guest post by Dr. Liz MacDonald, Sarah Kirn, and Laura Edson As it rises, sets, dances the seasons with the Earth, and sends space weather our way, the Sun is an integral part of our daily lives. Science is one of many ways to get to know our Sun better, and the upcoming year will… Read More »Connecting Senses and Sensors with Solar Science
By Vincent Ledvina, Andy Witteman, and Laura Brandt Watching the aurora is a breathtaking experience, but unless they are very strong, the Northern Lights don’t look to the naked eye like their colorful photos. It’s not a trick of the light—just a difference in the ways eyes and camera lenses work. In Your Eyes The… Read More »Battle of the Lenses: Eyes vs. Cameras
Please excuse the slight delay in posting this while we underwent tech updates on our blog. While our favorite quirky purple arc has been observed for millennia, we want to celebrate one highlight in its relationship with humanity. STEVE (“Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement”) is a purplish arc with stripy green ray features that runs… Read More »Celebrating STEVE and You!
Guest post by Dr. Liz MacDonald The Heliophysics Big Year will celebrate solar science and its connection with our world; Heliophysics itself is the study of our Sun and how it interacts with everything in our solar system. Inspired by the “Big Year” concept in birding, this will be a personal quest to experience and… Read More »Coming soon: the Heliophysics Big Year
Every community of practice evolves its own vocabulary, and scientists and science communicators often rib themselves for how jargony STEM can be. In the late 1970’s, tech film narrator Bud Haggert created the affectionately cheeky “Turbo Encabulator“, using plausible but made-up jargon to make this classic engineering sketch incomprehensible. Engineers have delighted in recreating and… Read More »Small Words, Big Ideas: Up Goer Five