IRIS Challenge: Tracking a Solar Storm

SPACE WEATHER REPORTS ARE IN! Thank you to all teachers who have submitted their class's reports. The reports have been posted on the Student Reports web page and, to quote our students from St. Joseph School, they are "sunsational!" Reports will continue to be accepted through Wednesday, May 22.

X-FLARES: Sunspot AR1748 has released four X-flares since May 13 and unleashed an M3-class solar flare today. The explosion might have hurled a CME toward Earth.

FLARE AND SOLAR TORNADO: On May 3, sunspot group AR1739 erupted and produced an M5-class flare and a solar tornado. Interesting!

LAUNCH PREPARATIONS UNDERWAY: IRIS is scheduled for launch on Wednesday, June 26! Visit the IRIS mission website to see images of the Pegasus XL rocket that will carry IRIS into space. Or visit the News portion of the website to see the IRIS spacecraft arriving at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

POST-CHALLENGE SURVEY OPEN: Upon completing the challenge activity with your students, teachers and group leaders are asked to respond to the brief post-challenge teacher survey. At the end of the survey, you will have the option to provide a mailing address to receive a NASA Sun-Earth Day packet. Limit one packet per teacher/group leader. (You do not have to submit a space weather report to respond to the survey.)

The Tracking a Solar Storm challenge officially begins on February 4. However, classes may register and participate in the challenge anytime during February, March, and April 2013. ***The pre-challenge teacher survey is now open. Please answer the survey's three questions before beginning the Tracking a Solar Storm activity with your students.***

Timing for the challenge is flexible, meaning that you can spread the challenge over a few months or compress the activity into a few weeks. The challenge will conclude in early May, so please plan for your students to submit their space weather reports on or before May 3 and be prepared to complete the post-challenge teacher survey by May 31.

IRIS Challenge Theme: Tracking a Solar Storm.

• The IRIS Challenge educator guide provides a framework and background information for implementing the challenge.
• The optional student materials include 4 flipcharts and 4 data collection sheets from NASA's Space Weather Action Center website that can be downloaded as PDFs.
• Supporting solar images and informational videos are housed on the Images and Videos pages. These may be updated during the Challenge.
• Research on the background of the IRIS Mission and other solar studies and missions may be found on the Links page.
• Profiles of persons key to this mission may be found on the Bios page.

The IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) mission traces the flow of energy and plasma through the chromosphere and transition region into the corona using spectrometry and imaging. IRIS is designed to provide significant new information to increase our understanding of energy transport into the corona and solar wind and provide an archetype for all stellar atmospheres. The unique state-of-the-art instrument (hi-res spectrograph) capabilities, coupled with state-of-the-art 3-D modeling, will fill a large gap in our knowledge of this dynamic region of the solar atmosphere.