From childhood, most everyone is taught to never look directly at the Sun. But nobody ever said you couldn't watch a movie of the Sun's activities.
The Yohkoh Movie Theater isn't your ordinary multiplex.
Online, interactive, and intent on bringing -- and explaining -- the natural brilliance of the Sun's diverse behaviors to classrooms everywhere, the Yohkoh Movie Theater is a box office smash with students. It's located on the Web at http://solar.physics.montana.edu/YPOP/
Each room of the Yohkoh Movie Theater -- actually a Web site, but designed much like a theater lobby, where persons navigate by clicking onto movie "posters" -- contains a wealth of information about the Sun.
From the lobby, students can decide what they'd like to see -- and nothing is R-rated! Now playing at the Yohkoh Movie Theater:
The Yohkoh Film Festival. You won't be seeing these films at a theater near you -- or with the naked eye! This film festival has but one star, our Sun. Here you can see the Sun's many different aspects, including a solar flare, wavelength fade, a solar flyby, a solar eclipse, comparisons of X-rays to white light, and continually updated images of the Sun. Admission is free.
Spotlight On. In this collection of interesting Sun facts, you can take a tour of the Sun, learn about magnetic fields, see the Sun as it looks from different points on Earth, see how it measures up to other stars, and find out how it is put together.
Sunbeam Surfing. This educational tour is directed at younger audiences, and tells how scientists are studying the Sun. Among the questions it asks: What is our Sun anyway? What color is sunlight? What's our Sun like on the inside? What's the strangest thing about our Sun? And more.
SXT Movie Maker. Feeling a little like Steven Spielberg? Try your hand at movie making here! From six years worth of archived solar satellite data, you can direct your own soft X-ray or white light movies. Lights, camera, action!
The Invisible Universe. There's more to the Sun than meets the eye. Here you can learn about all the types of electromagnetic radiation the Sun produces -- much of it invisible. You'll also learn the meaning behind such solar-centered words as ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays, infrared rays, microwaves, and radio waves.
YPOP Intermission. Need a break from the action? Additional entertainment activities for the classroom are provided here, including a "solar icebreaker" activity designed to get your students' attention.
Yohkoh Guestbook. Play Siskel & Ebert by entering your site reviews into the guestbook. Tell the producers what you think!
Classroom Activities. Teachers find these tools an excellent source for student stimulation. A number of detailed activities can be found on the site.
The Yohkoh Movie Theater is named for the Yohkoh satellite, an observatory for studying X-rays and gamma rays from the Sun. Launched from Kagoshima, Japan, on August 31, 1991, Yohkoh is a project of the Institute for Space and Astronautical Science of Japan. The spacecraft was built in Japan and the observing instruments have contributions from the US and Great Britian.
The Yohkoh Public Outreach Project (YPOP) is a NASA-funded educational program designed to bring high-quality solar data to computers via the Internet. YPOP is a collaboration between Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab and Montana State University.
Curator: Randolph Kim
Responsible NASA Official: Mark
Leon
Last Updated: 07/02/2002
