This site shows daily (back to June 16, 1995) a different image or photograph of the universe along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

NASA Astronomy Photo of the Day website hosted this photo of Earth at night in November 2000. The photo shows what Earth looks like at night with urban centers highlighted by concentrations of city lights. The image is a composite of hundreds of satellite photographs taken by orbiting Defense Meteorological Satellites Program satellites.

This is an activity about auroras and the scientific terminology used to describe them. Learners will read an article that provides an introduction to specific terms and concepts related to auroras and auroral substorms and examine photographs of a 2003 aurora and descriptions of an 1859 aurora to identify the various phases of auroral substorms. This is activity 11 from Exploring Magnetism: Magnetic Mysteries of the Aurora.

This is a lesson which gives students the opportunity to imagine they are scientists, provides them with a basic understanding of aurora and helps them to use creative methods in their observations. First, students will study the scientific aspect of the aurora. They will also look at images of the aurora (both pictures and illustrations) and describe what they think of when they see them. These descriptions can be stored in the student portfolios as they will be useful in future lessons. Includes teacher notes and instructions, student workshops and an online, animated story, and related teacher resources on aurora. This is lesson three of a collection of five activities that can be used individually or as a sequence; concludes with a KWL (Know/Want-to-know/Learned) assessment activity.

In this lesson, students will demonstrate their understanding of the aurora by writing their own poems. Teachers can decide which form(s) of poetry to use from their worksheets or allow students to create their own. Examples of styles include: Acrostic, List, Haiku, Like and As, and May and Could. To help students get inspired, the class will read a poem on the aurora, and they can also look through their portfolios to help form ideas. Includes teacher notes and instructions, student workshops and an online, animated story, and related teacher resources on aurora. This is lesson five of a collection of five activities that can be used individually or as a sequence; concludes with a KWL (Know/Want-to-know/Learned) assessment activity.

This is a lesson about Saturn. Learners will complete one or more poems about Saturn using descriptive words. As a pre-writing activity, students generate a word list from books they have heard and read and images they have seen and created. With the support of the word lists, they will create poems. This is lesson 10 of 10 in "Reading, Writing & Rings!" for grades 1-2.

In this activity, students construct base-two slide rules that add and subtract base-2 exponents (log distances), in order to multiply and divide corresponding powers of two. Students use these slide rules to generate both log and antilog equations, learning to translate one in terms of the other. This is activity C1 in the "Far Out Math" educator's guide. Lessons in the guide include activities in which students measure,compare quantities as orders of magnitude, become familiar with scientific notation, and develop an understanding of exponents and logarithms using examples from NASA's GLAST mission. These are skills needed to understand the very large and very small quantities characteristic of astronomical observations. Note: In 2008, GLAST was renamed Fermi, for the physicist Enrico Fermi.

This article describes the urban heat island phenomenon and provides an overview of a research project investigating the effect as seen in New York City. Topics include the large proportion of earth's population now living in cities and the exacerbating effect of climate change on heat islands. A discussion of the study in New York describes how researchers used LandSat imagery to correlate the hottest areas of the city with a lack of vegetation (especially trees) in those areas. Suggested mitigation solutions included planting more trees, converting roof surfaces to reflect light, and the use of 'green roofs', specially constructed systems that use living plants as the outermost layer.

This lithograph shows the break-off of a large iceberg from the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. This event occurred between November 4th and 12th, 2001, and provides powerful evidence of rapid changes underway in this area of Antarctica. The three images presented were acquired by the vertical-viewing (nadir) camera of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft.

This board game challenges players (ages 10+) to build a spaceship and fly to a black hole. The game provides opportunities for understanding phenomena based on current black hole research. During the game, players will experience the dangers and excitement of a real space mission, and learn about the nature of black holes by launching scientific probes. The game can be played competitively or as a team (instructions are also provided for playing in large groups. Black Hole Explorer consists of: Game Board, Game Rules, Spacecraft Data sheets, Science Briefing Room document, Event cards (28), Probe result cards (12), Energy tokens (140). Game components are available as PDF downloads; dice and game pieces must be provided by the user. NOTE: tokens and cards need to be cut to size from letter-size cardstock.

This collection of activities is based on a weekly series of space science problems distributed to thousands of teachers during the 2009-2010 school year. They were intended for students looking for additional challenges in the math and physical science curriculum in grades 9 through 12. The problems were created to be authentic glimpses of modern science and engineering issues, often involving actual research data. The problems were designed to be åÔone-pagersåÕ with a TeacheråÕs Guide and Answer Key as a second page. This compact form was deemed very popular by participating teachers.

"Build It Yourself: Satellite!" is an online Flash game hosted on the James Webb Space Telescope website. The goal of the game is to explain the decision-making process of satellite design. The user can choose to build a "small," "medium," or "large" astronomy satellite. The user then selects science goals, wavelength, instruments, and optics. The satellite is then launched on the appropriate rocket (shown via an animation). Finally, the user is shown what their satellite might look like, as well as what kind of data it might collect, via examples from similar real-life satellites. Satellites range from small X-ray missions without optics (like the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer) to large missions with segmented mirrors (like the James Webb Space Telescope).

In this activity, learners consider the requirements for human life beyond Earth's protection: air to breathe, plentiful food, shielding from ultraviolet light, power, etc. They then work in teams to design and construct a model of a space colony out of craft materials that would allow humans to survive the harsh environments of the Moon or Mars. Teams present their modules and colonies to one another and create a display for the library. This activity is part of Explore! To the Moon and Beyond! - developed specifically for use in libraries.

If you build it carefully, this crazy contraption demonstrates one of the basic laws of nature.

In this activity, learners build a sextant to measure the altitude, or height above the horizon, of an object. The activity was originally designed to accompany a previous NASA-funded educational program, entitled The Sun in Time.

A game where players use blueprints to build a fleet of rockets by dragging and dropping pieces into the correct spots.