An Education and Public Outreach (E/PO)
Newsletter
for the Sun-Earth Connection Science Community -
and beyond!
February 17,
2006
Volume VII, Issue 2
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See End for Sponsor Information, How to
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Issues
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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=> 1. Solar Viewer “Widget”
Draws Huge Interest
From the Public
=> 2. Celestial Music: The “Sounds of Space”
Project
=> 3. End of the Road for Satellite Can’t Stop the
E/PO
Effort
=> 4. Sun-Earth Day and Solar
Week Updates
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1. SOLAR VIEWER AS ‘WIDGET” DRAWS HUGE INTEREST
FROM THE PUBLIC
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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:
http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/view.php?widget=38218
Please note: You will
need the Yahoo! Widget Engine for Mac or PC.
http://widgets.yahoo.com/download/
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2. CELESTIAL MUSIC: THE
“SOUNDS OF SPACE” PROJECT
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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
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3. END OF THE ROAD FOR
SATELLITE CAN’T STOP THE E/PO EFFORT
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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
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4. SUN-EARTH DAY and SOLAR WEEK UPDATES
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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
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Newsletter Sponsor Info: Sun-Earth Connection
Education Forum
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©UC Regents 2006
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How to Contact Us
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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)
Sun-Earth
Connection Education Forum Web Site:
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov and
http://sunearth.ssl.berkeley.edu
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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