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people have been observing the Sun for

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thousands of years many cultures

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believed in a Sun Goddess and they

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thought of the Sun as the perfect object

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as soon as the telescope was invented

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people pointed it pretty much anything

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they could think of and they discovered

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that the Sun is actually not that

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perfect they were able to see sunspots

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today we know that the Sun is very

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dynamic and it has the largest eruptions

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in the solar system it's important for

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us to be able to predict solar weather

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using NASA satellites to help us look

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inside the Sun and better understand

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this giant violent star without the Sun

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life on the wouldn't exist the Sun is

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the big anchor that keeps our planet and

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the other planets of the solar system in

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a small area of space rather than just

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flying off into the rest of the universe

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since this is part of our everyday life

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I think this is something very

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fundamental to mankind just to

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understand what we are looking at hi my

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name is my Jordan and I'm student here

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at Parkland magnet Middle School in

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Rockville Maryland one of the cool

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things we study in astronomy class is

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actually the Sun and how we study it is

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we use the Sun spotter

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the Sun spotters actually show you a

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flexion or shadow of the Sun and you

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trace it and then over time we collect

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the papers and we can compare them to

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see how the sunspot heptane

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they move sunspots are regions on the

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Sun that are cooler than the surrounding

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areas in the sun's photosphere

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ruk is that the Sun yet we were so we

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invited NASA scientists 10 and Daniel to

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come and talk with the students about

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the Sun and help them with their

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calculations you know how to average

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these numbers together the final mean

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you add these numbers up and divide by

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the number of numbers the Sun is an

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active star that goes through regular

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cycles of maximum and minimum activity

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the students are calculating the solar

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maximum and solar minimum by looking at

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data over the last 50 years that covers

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how many sunspots occurred during every

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decade and it's and some of the really

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big sunspots you can easily see if you

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look at the Sun with the naked eye

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they're that big I think these sunspots

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were about you know 30 times as big as

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the earth they were just huge exactly

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how walking sunspots you look at the

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surface of the Sun and it's about 5,700

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degrees Kelvin

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I think the coolest sunspot goes down

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maybe 2000 to 2500 degrees cooler than

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that one of the most important things is

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that the Sun is a star it's the nearest

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example that we have in the entire

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universe what those little points of

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light in the sky are that we see at

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night the Sun is a very dynamic star and

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it changes all the time

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did you know it has the largest

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eruptions in all of the solar system we

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call these coronal mass ejections and

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they have an impact on us here on earth

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that's called solar weather in looking

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at that image do you guys have a

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prediction about which of those areas

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would be most likely to cause a coronal

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mass ejection yeah okay over here sir we

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care about solar weather because any

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communication devices that rely on

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transmitting information continuously

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can be affected high-precision

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electronics like electronics for

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high-speed trains can be affected by it

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and since high-speed train at 200 miles

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per hour is it is a pretty dangerous

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thing if it just runs loose so we want

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to know what's going on here the earth

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has its own way of protecting us from

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solar storms and solar weather it's

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something called a magnetic field you

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can imagine the earth magnetic field a

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bit like an egg shell around neck so

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without this shell we would be fried and

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what about if we were on the moon yeah

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if you're on the moon you would be fried

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as well so what you would have to do is

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go in your little spaceship wait until

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the storm is over today scientists are

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learning about solar weather using

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satellites that go around the Sun one of

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those satellites Soho is celebrating its

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10-year anniversary European Space

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Agency scientists Daniel came in to tell

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us how the Soho satellite is unique when

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compared to other satellites that use

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silver data the satellite the spacecraft

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contains twelve different experiments so

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we collect images of the Sun in

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different colors or different wavelength

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it is just very fascinating to look at

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the Sun and if you look at these images

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you'll see the Sun as most of us have

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never seen it before and you realize

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that this is a star that is violent and

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dynamic before the launch of Soho all we

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knew about space weather was from

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satellites in near Earth orbit and now

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we actually see the origin of stormy

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weather out in space this way we get a

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two to three days notice for

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disturbances that propagate to us and so

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the phrase that NASA invented that we

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are living with a star is actually true

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since this is part of our everyday life

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I think this is something very

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fundamental to mankind just to

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understand what we are looking at our

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teachers tell us every day that there

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are less and less scientists to discover

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new things when I go to college I am

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going to major in aerospace engineering

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and hopefully I will get a job for NASA

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and the

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spacecraft my personal goal is I just

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love to instill in them curiosity

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so I hope I'm raising the next

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generation of scientists and I hope that