Communicating Heliophysics at Different Levels

Glowing auroras are the result of millions of individual particle collisions, lighting up Earth's magnetic field lines.

Auroras are a brilliant display of light in the night sky. The aurora borealis and aurora australis—also known as the northern and southern lights—occur mainly near Earth's poles. When the solar wind reaches Earth's magnetosphere, it can send charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field raining down toward Earth's poles, driven by a powerful process called magnetic reconnection. Along the way, particles can collide with atoms and molecules in Earth's upper atmosphere, which provides the atoms with extra energy that they release as a burst of light. These interactions continue at lower and lower altitudes until all the excess energy is lost. Studying auroras offers insights on how our magnetosphere reacts to near-Earth space weather.

The biosphere encompasses all life on Earth and extends from root systems to mountaintops and all depths of the ocean.

The biosphere is made up of the parts of Earth where life exists. It extends from the deep ocean floor, to lush rainforests, and high mountaintops. This important sphere supports almost every aspect of human well-being and distinguishes Earth from other planets in our solar system. NASA data have changed the way we study life on Earth. Data on vegetation health, primary productivity, evapotranspiration, forest structure, and ocean chlorophyll provide insight into the health and productivity of the biosphere. The Sun is the only star we know of that supports a planet with a biosphere.

Human activities are driving the global warming trend observed since the mid-20th century.

Scientists attribute the global warming trend observed since the mid-20^th century to the human expansion of the "greenhouse effect" — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space. Over the last century, burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil has increased the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂). This increase happens because the coal or oil burning process combines carbon with oxygen in the air to make CO₂.

The rising of warm air and the sinking of cool air.

Heat mixes and moves air. When a layer of air receives enough heat from the Earth's surface, it expands and moves upward. Colder, heavier air flows under it which is then warmed, expands, and rises. The warm rising air cools as it reaches higher, cooler regions of the atmosphere and begins to sink. Convection causes local breezes, winds, and thunderstorms. Convection also occurs in the Sun, where convection currents help move energy from the core of the Sun to its surface.

The Sun's upper atmosphere is called the corona.

Introductory: The Sun has layers like an onion. The outer layer is called the corona. The Sun's energy is created in the core and travels outward through the corona and into space.

Intermediate:  The corona is the outer atmosphere of the Sun. The Sun has six major regions: the core, radiative zone, convective zone, photosphere, chromosphere, and corona. The Sun’s layered regions are marked by changes in density, from the highest density in the core to the lowest density in the corona. Temperatures in the corona can reach up to millions of degrees. The corona is the source of the solar wind as well as solar flares and coronal mass ejections – the energetic solar eruptions that create the strongest space weather. 

Advanced:  The corona is filled with plasma, whose movements are governed by the tangle of magnetic fields surrounding the Sun. It emits energy primarily as ultraviolet light. The Sun’s atmosphere blows out into the solar system as a stream of charged particles called the “solar wind.” Strong, dynamic magnetic fields on the Sun cause sunspots, solar flares, prominences, and coronal mass ejections.

Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are large clouds of solar plasma and embedded magnetic fields released into space after a solar eruption.

CMEs expand as they sweep through space, often measuring millions of miles across, and can collide with planetary magnetic fields. When directed at Earth, a CME can produce geomagnetic disturbances that ignite bright aurora, short-circuit satellites and power grids on Earth, or at their worst, even endanger astronauts in orbit.

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

The human eye can only detect only a small portion of this spectrum called visible light. A radio detects a different portion of the spectrum, and an x-ray machine uses yet another portion. NASA's scientific instruments use the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum to study the Earth, the solar system, and the universe beyond. When you tune your radio, watch TV, send a text message, or pop popcorn in a microwave oven, you are using electromagnetic energy. You depend on this energy every hour of every day. Without it, the world you know could not exist.

Electromagnetism is one of the fundamental forces of nature. Electric currents give rise to magnetism and conversely magnetism can induce electric currents.

The Sun is a giant magnetic star, made of material that moves in concert with the laws of electromagnetism. The Sun is made of a super-hot, electrically charged gas called plasma. The plasma rotates creating complex magnetic fields. The Sun’s magnetic field is responsible for everything from the solar explosions that cause space weather on Earth – such as auroras – to the interplanetary magnetic field and radiation through which our spacecraft journeying around the solar system must travel.

Our planet is constantly trying to balance the flow of energy in and out of Earth’s system, referred to as Earth's energy budget.

Radiative energy enters Earth’s system from the sunlight that shines on our planet. Some of this energy reflects off of Earth’s surface or atmosphere back into space. The rest gets absorbed, heats the planet, and is then emitted as thermal radiative energy the same way that black asphalt gets hot and radiates heat on a sunny day. Eventually this energy also heads toward space, but some of it gets re-absorbed by clouds and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The absorbed energy may also be emitted back toward Earth, where it will warm the surface even more. NASA data has confirmed that human activities are changing Earth's energy budget, trapping much more energy from the Sun than is escaping back into space.