Since it is the goal of this site to educate readers about the solar maximum, we offer the following list of resources for educators to use in their classrooms. Live data, exciting graphics, and interesting lesson plans should all be useful for teachers who want their students to learn about the solar/sunspot cycle and solar maximum.

Sites Providing Lesson Plans and Activities

• Solarscapes Yearly Mean Sunspot Numbers Activity (PDF file)
  By completing this activity, students find what pattern(s) emerge when sunspot numbers are plotted over a period of time.
• Activity Cycles of Other Stars
  In this activity, students will plot actual data obtained by astronomers which indicate how bright the so-called Calcium H and K lines are.
• Learning Cycle Lesson Plan -- Sunspots
  Students using this activity will look at a timeplot and calculate mean value to determine the sunspot cycle.
• Measuring Solar Activity
  Students learn to recognize common structures in the images, patterns in five years' worth of images by making graphs, patterns in 250 years' worth of data, comparing to graphs of Part Two, make predictions about the future, recognize spatial relationships by comparing simultaneous images made in different wavelengths, and make testable predictions about the observable Sun.
• Seeing the Sun in a New Light
  "From Stargazers to Starships" offers a lesson plan on features of the Sun's corona, observed from spacecraft in the extreme ultra violet (EUV) and in x-rays, including coronal holes and coronal mass ejections (CME). This section also discusses related phenomena in interplanetary space and on Earth.
• Solar Cycle Exercise
  This activity has students spreadsheet program to plot the average number of sunspots in a year.
• Solar Irradiance and Solar Activity Cycles
  This activity for grades 9-12 helps students learn about the solar cycle and its relationship to solar irradiance.
• Solar Minimum/Solar Maximum Exercise
  Students use a spreadsheet program to look at the number of sunspots observed on days in 1986 and 1989.
• Solar Storms and You! Activities (grades 7-9)
  • Solar Activity and Coronal Mass Ejections
    In this activity, students will construct a graph to compare the sunspot cycle with Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).
  • Sunspot Activity and Ocean Temperatures
    Students will analyze and compare two graphs to determine if there is a correlation between solar activity and ocean temperature.
  • Sunspot Activity on Other Stars
    Students will analyze and compare stellar activity graphs to determine how similar or different they are to the solar sunspot cycle.
  • The Sunspot Cycle
    The student will create a list and construct a graph of the number of sunspots using both technology and paper. The student will explore patterns in the data and locate the maximum and the minimum.
• Sunspots and Solar Activity
  A part of the BLACKOUT! pages from POETRY, this page outlines the basics of sunspot plotting and solar rotation.
• Sunspots and Solar Storms
  This lesson plan allows students to explore the solar cycle by counting sunspots and finding patterns in plots of sunspot numbers, then forecasting the strength of the next cycle.
• Thursday's Classroom Issues
  • Solar Activity
    The issue from March 9, 2000, discusses solar activity, the solar cycle, and the upcoming solar maximum.
  • Happy Birthday, Galileo
    The issue from February 3, 2000, deals with Galileo's legacy, including sunspot-counting.
  • Space Weather
    The issue from January 6, 2000, introduces students to space weather, the phenomenon that will become more obvious at solar maximum.
  • Sunspots
    The issue from October 14, 1999, has information and activites about the most obvious feature of the Sun.

• Current Solar Images
  A page of the latest available images from SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) Extreme-Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) and Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI), the Yohkoh Soft X-ray Telescope, the U.S. National Solar Observatory at Kitt Peak, the U.S. National Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak, and the High Altitude Observatory Mauna Loa Solar Observatory.
• SOHO Latest Images
  The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory team generates this daily index of pages of the latest solar images both from its satellite and from other observatories around the world. Radioheliograms, H-alpha images, magnetograms, and Calcium II images are available, among others.
• Space Environment Center Solar Image Index
  An index of hundreds of solar images, by date. Mostly H-alpha and white light images and magnetograms with a few others.
• Space Weather Today
  This page from Windows to the Universe gives current solar images (SOHO/EIT, Yohkoh, coronameter, magnetogram, white light, Ca II, H-alpha, etc.), measurements of geomagnetic activity (Kp, interplanetary magnetic field strength, solar wind speed, etc.), and up-to-date views of the aurora from the Polar satellite.
• ISTP Real-Time Monitoring Page
  Designed for scientists, this page has links to nearly every satellite and program producing Sun-Earth connections data and images, including all of the above. An outreach version of the page (fewer links and more explanation) is also available.

• Butterfly Diagram with Flares and CMEs
  This image shows the "butterfly diagram," a figure that tracks the location of sunspots during the solar cycle, resulting in a pattern that resembles a butterfly's wings as the sunspots migrate equatorward on the Sun near solar maximum.
• The Changing Sun
  Yohkoh soft x-ray images taken over nearly a solar cycle show the startling difference in the appearance of the Sun between solar minimum (the dark, inactive Sun on the right) and solar maximum (the bright Sun on the left covered with active regions).
• Highly Disturbed Auroral Oval During 1989 Storm
  This Dynamics Explorer satellite image shows the southern auroral oval during the great geomagnetic storm of March 1989 (solar maximum period). Note the enormous size of the oval.
• Solar Maximum Collage
  A large collage of images dealing in some way with the solar cycle or maximum: the butterfly diagram, changing suns, the solar cycle diagram, the Solar Maximum Mission satellite, and the Little Ice Age during the Maunder Minimum, among others.
• The Sun and Corona through the Solar Cycle
  A look at the outer atmosphere of the Sun -- the corona -- in this image shows definite (but usually invisible) changes throughout the solar cycle at the same time as the surface of the Sun changes visibly.
• The Sun in H-Alpha with Sunspot Cycle
  This image combines changes in the Sun's appearance in H-alpha with a graph of the Wolf sunspot number, number of sunspot groups, and auroral observations.

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Brought to you by the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Program and NASA.
Web Design and Development: Theresa Valentine
Last Modified: 8/3/00