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NASA Heliophysics Education

The NASA Heliophysics Education Activation Team’s (NASA HEAT) Framework for Heliophysics Education outlines key concepts, practices, and strategies for integrating heliophysics into educational curricula and learning activities. It provides educators, scientists, and outreach professionals with a cohesive set of Heliophysics Big Ideas that align with the three questions that drive NASA’s heliophysics research. 

Heliophysics Big Ideas

The Sun can provide a fun and exciting laboratory for exploring magnetism, gravity, light, energy, and much more! Learn how to integrate heliophysics concepts and resources into existing educational and outreach activities by exploring the Heliophysics Big Ideas below.

Framework for Heliophysics Education

The giant, orange Sun dominates the right side of the image. Variations in dark and light orange show the dynamic surface of the Sun. A giant solar prominence loops off of the Sun to the left. A size comparison shows a tiny Earth above the prominence.

The Sun is really big and influences all objects in the solar system.

Heliophysics Big Idea 1.1
Driving Question: What are the impacts of the changing Sun on humanity?
Relevant Topics: lunar eclipse, lunar phases, Newton’s Law of Gravity, seasons, solar eclipse, solar system, transits

First, visible at the top, are parts of the space station itself including solar panels. Just below the station is the band of our Milky Way Galaxy, glowing with the combined light of billions of stars, but dimmed in patches by filaments of dark dust. The band of red light just below the Milky Way is airglow -- Earth's atmosphere excited by the Sun and glowing in specific colors of light. Green airglow is visible below the red. Of course that's our Earth below its air, with the terminator between day and night visible near the horizon. As clouds speckle the planet, illumination from a bright lightning bolt is seen toward the lower right.

The Sun is active and can impact technology on Earth via space weather.

Heliophysics Big Idea 1.2
Driving Question: What are the impacts of the changing Sun on humanity?
Relevant Topics: atmosphere, aurora, geomagnetic storm, ionization, magnetic fields, magnetic reconnection, magnetosphere, magnetotail, plasma, radio blackout, solar cycle, solar flare, solar wind, space weather, sunspots, Van Allen belts

A graph trending upwards with a setting Sun as the background.

The Sun’s energy drives Earth’s climate, but the climate is in a delicate balance and is changing due to human activity.

Heliophysics Big Idea 1.3
Driving Question: What are the impacts of the changing Sun on humanity?
Relevant Topics: atmosphere, climate change, energy, greenhouse effect, radiation

Infographic with 3 rows comparing the habitale zone size for 3 different types of stars, M, K, G.

Life on Earth has evolved with complex diversity because of our location near the Sun. It is just right!

Heliophysics Big Idea 2.1
Driving Question: How do Earth, the solar system, and the heliosphere respond to changes on the Sun?
Relevant Topics: biosphere, energy, habitable zone, light, magnetosphere, photosynthesis, radiation

A graphic shows the twin Voyagers beyond the Heliosheath, Heliopause, termination shock and heliosheath.

The Sun defines the space around it, which is different from interstellar space.

Heliophysics Big Idea 2.2
Driving Question: How do Earth, the solar system, and the heliosphere respond to changes on the Sun?
Relevant Topics: heliosphere, interstellar space, magnetic fields, plasma, solar wind, space weather

A colorful illustration with examples of a variety of objects in the electromagnetic spectrum. There is a rainbow band representing visible light in the spectrum, a satellite in the sky and mountains in the background.

Electromagnetic energy travels in waves and spans a broad spectrum from very long radio waves to very short gamma rays.

Heliophysics Big Idea 2.3
Driving Question: How do Earth, the solar system, and the heliosphere respond to changes on the Sun?
Relevant Topics: electromagnetic spectrum, energy, light, photosynthesis, radiation, spectroscopy

An up close image of the Sun

The Sun is made of churning plasma, causing the surface to be covered with complex, tangled magnetic fields.

Heliophysics Big Idea 3.1
Driving Question: What causes the Sun to vary?
Relevant Topics: coronal mass ejection, electromagnetism, energy, ionization, magnetic fields, magnetic reconnection, plasma, solar cycle, solar flare, solar wind, space weather, sunspots

Cutaway illustration shows layers of the Sun from the atmosphere to the core.

Energy from the Sun is created in the core and travels outward through the Sun and into the heliosphere.

Heliophysics Big Idea 3.2
Driving Question: What causes the Sun to vary?
Relevant Topics: convection, corona, energy, heliosphere, light, nuclear fusion, plasma, radiation, solar wind, space weather

A rectangular image with black vertical rectangles at the bottle left and top right to indicate missing data. A young star-forming region is filled with wispy orange, red, and blue layers of gas and dust. The upper left corner of the image is filled with mostly orange dust, and within that orange dust, there are several small red plumes of gas that extend from the top left to the bottom right, at the same angle. The center of the image is filled with mostly blue gas. At the center, there is one particularly bright star, that has an hourglass shadow above and below it. To the right of that is what looks a vertical eye-shaped crevice with a bright star at the center. The gas to the right of the crevice is a darker orange. Small points of light are sprinkled across the field, brightest sources in the field have extensive eight-pointed diffraction spikes that are characteristic of the Webb Telescope.

Our Sun, like all stars, has a life cycle.

Heliophysics Big Idea 3.3
Driving Question: What causes the Sun to vary?
Relevant Topics: nuclear fusion, solar cycle, stellar evolution, sunspots

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