Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View
NASA’s Heliophysics (physics of the sun) website has an excellent collection of videos that would link quite nicely with physics discussions of the physics of light (electromagnetism) and the Earth’s magnetic field (as well as the action of charged particles in a magnetic field.
They also have awesome solar videos, like this one of coronal rain.
Natural phenomena like this are great for students to analyze because they require the integration of multiple concepts to explain.
NASA has an excellent simulation of the complex process of landing Curiosity on Mar. It supplements their awesome 7 Minutes of Terror video.
This NASA video updates us on the search for Earth-like planets around other stars. It overviews what’s been found, and outlines some upcoming missions.
The key to finding a planet hospitable to life (as we know it) is finding one with water at the surface. We’ve found large waterworlds that are too large and hot, with “thick, steamy atmosphere[s]”.
We’ve also found Earth-sized planets but they’re, mostly, too close to their stars to support liquid water, and it’s hard to tell what their atmospheres are like because they’re so far away. One of NASA’s upcoming missions, one will look at the light reflected off Earth-sized planets to determine the composition of atmospheres: the technique is called transit spectroscopy, and is based on detecting the emission spectra of the gasses in the atmosphere.
BadAstronomer has posted an awesome video of the moon going through its phases for an entire year.
(it’s particularly awesome in full screen and HD.)
The video is based off a NASA webpage that will generate a picture of the moon for any hour, of any day, in the year of 2012 (and only if you’re in the northern hemisphere near the equator, but close enough). They have lots more videos and images.
Interestingly, the images are all computer generated — they’re not real photos. They are based on high-resolution images and topography data taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
SOHO scientists think that coronal mass ejection that happens right after the comet hits the Sun was probably not caused by the collision. But it looks really cool.
SOHO has a nice glossary of terms for understanding the Sun that’s specifically for middle school students (there is also a more general one). They also have some much higher quality video.