Note: some of these links may be inactive or require updating – a work in progress.

The Sun & Space Weather pages

  • APOD Index has categories on the Sun and atmospheric phenomena with useful descriptions from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day site.The Exploration of the Earth’s Magnetosphere is a detailed and extensive educational website on Earth’s environment in space. It includes Teachers’ notes. The entire site may also be downloaded as a 9 MB Zipped file.
  • HAO Education is the education site for the High Altitude Observatory concerned with solar and solar-terrestrial physics. It has a range of resources, images, historical information, tutorials and notes aimed at students and teachers.
  • The Human Impact of Solar Storms and Space Weather is a handy educational site with concise pages covering a range of issues on space weather and its effects on us.
  • International Heliophysical Year 2007. 2007 is the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year and also marks 50 years of the exploration of Space. This is the official website for the event.
  • The Australian Space Weather Forecasting Centre (formely the IPS) is the Australian Government organisation responsible for monitoring space weather and forecasting its effects on us.
  • Propagation is aimed at ham radio operators and shortwave radio listeners. It has live updates of the Sun imaged at several wavebands, solar storm activity, auroral activity and much more.
  • SolarMax is the website of the IMAX movie that tells the story of how we have come to understand the Sun. The DVD of the movie is readily available in stores in Australia.
  • SpaceWeather.com has a wealth of news and information about the Sun-Earth environment. It is updated daily.
  • The Singing Sun is is interesting educational site on helioseismology developed by the Stanford Solar Center. You can view animations and movies or listen to audio files of solar oscillations.
  • The Sun from Gene Smith’s Astronomy Tutorial at the University of California San Diego provides an effective summary of the Sun as a star. It has useful diagrams and discusses sunspots and the solar cycle.
  • Tracking the Sunspot Cycle (NASA) is a useful page covering the discovery and history of the sunspot cycle and the role of Mount Wilson Observatory.

Energy from Stars and Nuclear Radiation

  • ANSTO Nuclear Science in Society Educational resource is the educational homepage for the Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation. The Theme 1 section: About radioactivity addresses the requirements of the Cosmic Engine module and has several activities that can be downloaded as PDF files.
  • Main Sequences Stars from the University of Oregon gives a good overview of fusion and stellar structure. This lecture is also available as a narrated audio with animations showing the main nucleosynthesis processes in stars.
  • GCSE Nuclear Radiation is a useful website with concise explanations, clear diagrams and online quizzes written to support a UK text book for Year 10 students. The section on basic types is particularly relevant to the Cosmic Engine syllabus.
  • Solving the mystery of the missing neutrinos is an excellent account of the Solar neutrino problem written by the eminent physicist John N. Bahcall, the “Godfather” of solar neutrinos.
  • Radiation and Life is a handy one page summary of biological effects of radiation and the different types of nuclear radiation. It is written by a Professor of radiology at Columbia University.

Solar Observatories & Sources of Solar Data

Applets, Activities and Software

  • La Trobe University Space Weather Project is an excellent resource written for secondary school students. It has five units that address many of the requirements of the Cosmic Engine module. Student worksheets and teacher guides for several activities may be downloaded from the site. [inactive]
  • Measuring Solar Activity is a structured set of four activities including plotting and analysing sunspot numbers and cycles. These were developed by the Yohkoh Public Outreach Project (YPOP) Team based at Montana State University. A printable version of the class activity can also be downloaded from the site.
  • Sunspots and Climate from the Center for Science Education (UCAR) is an online education resource leading students through the activities of counting and plotting sunspot numbers.
  • SOHO Classroom Activities has three downloadable activities utilising SOHO data; Tracking Sunspots (including a version for visually impaired students), Measuring a Coronal Mass Ejection and Matching Magnetic Activity and Active Regions on the Sun.
  • Solar Storms and You. Activity 1: The Sunspot Cycle is a simple activity requiring you to graph and analyse sunspot activity. The data table and graph paper can be downloaded from this NASA site.
  • Sun Centered Physics has four mathematical activities, the first of which uses ‘a coronal mass ejection (CME) to determine the relationship between position, average velocity and average acceleration and to analyze the motion of the coronal mass in terms of the forces acting on the body.’

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