COMMENTARY
SECEF NEWSLETTER
VolumeVII, Issue 202.17.2006
THE SUN-EARTH CONNECTION
An Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) Newsletter for the Sun-Earth Connection Science Community - and beyond!
See End for Sponsor Information, How to Contribute (please do!), Contact Us, or Find Back Issues
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Solar Viewer "Widget" Draws Huge Interest From the Public
- Celestial Music: The "Sounds of Space" Project
- End of the Road for Satellite Can't Stop the E/PO Effort
- Sun-Earth Day and Solar Week Updates
1. SOLAR VIEWER AS ‘WIDGET” DRAWS HUGE INTEREST FROM THE PUBLIC
Do you know what a “widget” is? If not, get with the program!
Widgets are little applications that run on your desktop--either on Mac or Windows. They are a relatively new phenomenon. Recently Yahoo! has begun to promote them and they are growing increasingly popular.
Our Solar Viewer Widget takes the solar images from the Sun-Earth Viewer and allows them to appear on your desktop and update automatically. It is one of the most popular Yahoo! Widgets. It had over 27,000 downloads in less than two weeks. The current download count is 36,785.
Solar Viewer Widget:
Please note: You will need the Yahoo! Widget Engine for Mac or PC. http://widgets.yahoo.com/download/
2. CELESTIAL MUSIC: THE “SOUNDS OF SPACE” PROJECT
In an unusual collaboration, the STEREO-IMPACT E/PO team has been working with musicians and scientists to create software that converts the invisible STEREO solar wind particle data into stereophonic sounds--that is to say, music. Since the STEREO mission consists of two satellites, each located in a different place in Earth’s orbit around the Sun, particles will hit the particle detectors aboard each satellite differently. If a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) hits one satellite full-on and the other satellite only receives a glancing blow, the data (when converted to music) will be heard in one audio stereo channel as a more intricate sound than in the other channel -- each channel representing the data from each spacecraft.
This is the idea behind the software development led by the Space Sciences Lab at University of California, Berkeley (UCB) STEREO- IMPACT and STEREO-PLASTICS E/PO and science sound team: Laura Peticolas, Nahide Craig, Janet Luhmann, and Stuart Bale. With the team’s input and guidance, the software was designed by musicians Roberto Manzaneres-Morales and David Bithell of the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at UCB.
Until the STEREO satellites collect and send back their data in Fall 2006, the software uses the currently available solar data. One software program is designed to train students and the public how to hear and discern the different sounds related to specific data quantities. Another software program is for artists and musicians wanting more flexibility in creating interesting music from the data. A third software program plots the two STEREO satellites’ data in graphical form. Currently, the program uses composition data from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE), with color representing the particle flux as a function of energy and time. The colors determine how the sounds are created and allow the public and scientists to hear what the graph of the particle data looks like. The audio stereo affect demonstrates the difference in the flux of the ions (H, He, Fe) as the solar wind flows by the ACE satellite.
To listen for yourself, and for more information, please visit
http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/impact/sounds.html You
can download
the software from the Applications page.
-- Laura Peticolas laura@sunearth.ssl.berkeley.edu
3. END OF THE ROAD FOR SATELLITE CAN’T STOP THE E/PO EFFORT
Rumors of the demise of NASA's IMAGE satellite on December 18 were, unfortunately, not greatly exaggerated -- it’s unlikely we will hear again from the pioneering explorer of Earth's external magnetic field (magnetosphere). But in its six year life, IMAGE (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration) exceeded expectations and left us a rich legacy for ongoing research. Imagery captured by the ground-breaking cameras on IMAGE transformed our understanding of geospace and previously invisible “space weather.”
Not only were the satellite and its instruments innovative, the IMAGE E/PO program, called POETRY (Public Outreach, Education, Teaching, and Reaching Youth), moved boldly into previously unexplored territory, and received numerous awards for videos, books, primary and secondary school curricula, teacher training, museum exhibits, planetarium shows, student workbooks and web- based information. "The thing I am most proud of is that when we began the E/PO program for IMAGE, there were very few K-12 resources available for SEC education, other than a few mission posters and some spiffy web sites," reflects Dr. Sten Odenwald, E/PO lead for IMAGE/POETRY. "IMAGE-POETRY took up the challenges of bringing space weather into the classroom in as many ways as we could figure out to do. We actually had to create an entire educational context for our satellite's research because there were no such resources available at the time. Because math and science were so intimately connected, POETRY soon focused all of its formal education resources on creating math-oriented products for K-12 teachers."
You can read the full text of Dr. Odenwald’s thoughts on the exemplary IMAGE E/PO program, his reflections on it’s achievements, lessons learned, and hopes for the future.
http://sunearth.ssl.berkeley.edu/SECNews/IMAGE_lookback.htm
IMAGE POETRY website: http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/
Press release here
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/jan/HQ_06030_IMAGE_quits.html
4. SUN-EARTH DAY and SOLAR WEEK UPDATES
http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2006/index.php
- The Sun-Earth Day packets are now available, so are bookmarks, for those hosting one or more events.
- We are scheduling another training with the Solar System Ambassadors. Interested? Email me.
Other Updates of Interest:
- The power point slides are ready for downloading (“Solar Eclipses,” “Making Sun-Earth Connections,” “Sun, Earth and Moon”) at http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2006/promotional/powerpoint.php
Dates to Remember:
- Training session for formal education - Email me.
- The NASA Connect program – “Eclipse: Path of Totality” – debuted on February 16th. Other February showings on Feb. 16, 18, 19, 24, 25, and March 19. Check the website: http://connect.larc.nasa.gov/index.html
- Solar Week- week of March 6th-10th. www.solarweek.org A week of online curriculum on the Sun-Earth Connection for teachers and students with games, lesson plans, and information for teachers, and interactions with scientists, and much more.
- Total Solar Eclipse in Turkey - March 29th
Your Special Events:
- Send me a description of your special Eclipse event, so we can add it to the website.
-- Elaine Lewis lewis@mail630.gsfc.nasa.gov
Newsletter Sponsor Info: Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum
©UC Regents 2006
How to Contact Us
The Sun-Earth CONNECTION Education and Public Outreach newsletter is issued approximately every 6-8 weeks. Back issues can be found at
http://sunearth.ssl.berkeley.edu/SECNews/
The Newsletter is sponsored by the Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum (Goddard Space Flight Center and UC Berkeley; Isabel Hawkins and Jim Thieman, Co-Directors)
Please direct all submissions to the newsletter to:
Karin Hauck (Editor) - E-mail: editor@sunearth.ssl.berkeley.edu
Phone:(510) 642-2343 Fax: (510) 643-5660
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