Helio Highlights: October 2025 – NASA Science

On a clear night, you can see thousands of stars in the sky. Most of these stars are dozens or hundreds of light years away from us. A light year is the distance a ray of light travels in one year: approximately 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers). This means that the stars we see at night require their light, which travels at about 186,000 miles per second (or about 300 thousand kilometers per second), dozens or even hundreds of years, to reach us.

But during the day, we see only one star: the Sun. It dominates the daytime sky because it is so close – about 93 million miles (or 150 million kilometers) away. That distance is also called an astronomical unit, and is another unit of measurement astronomers use to record distances in space. But even though 1 astronomical unit may seem a long way, it is still about 270 thousand times closer than the next nearest star system, Alpha Centauri.

The Sun is not only close – it’s also huge! The Sun is so big that it can hold more than a million Earths, and its mass is more than 330 thousand Earths combined. Its light also provides the energy that allows life as we know it to flourish. For these reasons, the Sun is a powerful presence in our lives. We all have a relationship with the Sun, so it is essential to know about it and the benefits and dangers of its presence.

Autumn is the time when most students in the United States return for the new school year after summer vacation. This back to school time provides a great opportunity to reach out to students after a few months of fun in the sun and capture their imaginations with new information about how our native star works and how it impacts their lives.

To this end, NASA makes efforts to educate and inform students and teachers about the Sun, its characteristics and how it affects our lives. NASA’s Heliophysics Education Activation Team (HEAT) teaches people of all ages about the Sun, including everything from safely observing an eclipse to mitigating the effects of geomagnetic storms.

This often means preparing lesson plans for teachers. By pairing NASA scientists who study heliophysics with education experts who align content to K-12 content standards, HEAT brings heliophysics out of the lab and into the classroom. Making solar science accessible allows learners of all ages and backgrounds to get involved and excited about the discoveries, and foster a lifelong thirst for knowledge that builds the next generation of scientists.

Since 2007, NASA’s Living with a Star (LWS) program and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research’s Cooperative Programs for the Advancement of Earth System Science (CPAESS) have collaborated to offer a Heliophysics Summer School program for doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars. The aim of this program is to promote heliophysics as a unified science, teaching a new generation of researchers to engage in cross-disciplinary communication while they are still early in their careers.

As part of its efforts to raise awareness of the scientific and societal importance of heliophysics and to inspire future scientists and promote breakthroughs in heliophysics as a discipline, the NASA Heliophysics Education Activation Team (NASA HEAT) is working on a slate of educational materials designed to engage students in real-world mission data.

My NASA Data, in collaboration with NASA HEAT, has released a new set of resources for teachers focused on space weather. My NASA Data supports the use of authentic NASA data as part of classroom learning materials. These materials include lesson plans, mini-lessons (small activities for quick engagement), student-facing web-based interactives, and a longer “story map” that deepens investigation of the phenomenon over several class periods.

These resources are designed to connect learners to data and observations collected during both past and ongoing missions, including the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), and others.

An example of this is educational materials published to support outreach efforts focusing on the US solar eclipses of 2023 and 2024. These materials allowed learners to collect their own data on cloud and temperature observations during the eclipse with the Globe Observer Eclipse tool. This gives them the opportunity to participate in the scientific process by making meaningful contributions to our understanding of the Earth system and the global environment.

Groups like HEAT don’t just spark interest in science to inspire the next generation of heliophysicists. Just as amateur astronomers can bring much more data to the table than their professional counterparts, citizen scientists can do much to support the same institutions that may have inspired them to practice citizen science. This could mean anything from helping track sunspots to reporting on the impacts of space weather events.

These enthusiasts are also adept at sharing knowledge of heliophysics. Even just one person motivated to buy a telescope with the right solar filters (international standard ISO 12312-2), set it up in a park, and teach their neighbors about the Sun can work wonders, and there are a lot more of them than professional scientists. This means that these amateur heliophysicists can reach further than even the best official outreach.

Whether they are in the classroom, at conferences, or in online lectures, the efforts of science communicators are an important part of the work done at NASA. Just as scientists make new discoveries, these writers, teachers, audio and video producers and outreach specialists are passionate about making those discoveries accessible to the public.

All of this work helps inspire future scientists and inspire wonder in today’s citizen scientists. The Sun is a constant and brilliant presence in our lives, and it provides plenty of reasons to be inspired in the present and future.