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EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES AND EVENTS

Educational Resources and Events Catalog

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  1. Cosmic Canvas: Stellar Evolution Program Guide & Resources

    Activities | Resource Guide
    Stars are born, live incredible lives, and eventually die — sometimes in dramatic ways! This journey, known as stellar evolution, helps us understand how stars shape the universe. With these program...
    Artist's concept of the binary star system HM Sge on the black background of space sprinkled with various sizes of red and white points of light. At the top of the image, a blazing hot white disk surrounds a white dwarf star that is pulling a stream of material from its red giant companion, the glowing mottled ball at bottom right.

  2. Cosmic Stories

    Activities
    This activity allows participants to practice making observations and conveying ideas while crafting a poem, short story, or song about astronomical images, illustrations, artworks, tactile plates, and/or...
    Composite image of MSH 15-52, a pulsar wind nebula, which strongly resembles a ghostly purple hand with sparkling fingertips. The hazy purple cloud is set against a black, starry backdrop. The bright white spot near the base of the palm is the pulsar. The three longest fingertips of the hand-shape point toward 1 o’clock. There, a small, mottled, orange and yellow cloud appears to sparkle or glow like embers. This orange cloud is part of the remains of the supernova explosion that created the pulsar.

  3. Paint a Star-forming Nebula

    Activities
    In this activity, participants explore real telescope images of star-forming nebulae and create watercolor paintings to visualize how stars, gas, and dust interact in these dynamic regions. A step-by-step...
    A person’s hand holds a paintbrush and is adding finishing touches to a watercolor painting of a star-forming nebula. The scene is viewed from above, with the paper placed on a wooden table. The nebula painting shows towering, reddish-brown pillar-like formations resembling those found in deep space images, surrounded by a soft, swirling purple and blue sky filled with stars. Bright yellow and orange star shapes, along with small scattered black and blue dots, depict stars scattered across the cosmic scene. On the left side of the image, a watercolor palette features over 30 vibrant colors, including shades of pink, orange, blue, green, and brown. A few colors show signs of recent use, with drops of paint on the palette and paper.

  4. Exploring the Cosmic Cliffs in 3D

    Videos
    This visualization presents a flight through the ethereal landscape of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s famous image nicknamed “Cosmic Cliffs.” These cliffs are a spectacular...
    The image is divided horizontally by an undulating line between a brown cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom and a comparatively clear upper portion in blue. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing innumerable stars of many sizes. The upper blue portion has wispy translucent cloud-like streaks rising from the nebula below. The orange and brown cloudy formation in the bottom half varies in density and ranges from translucent to opaque. The nebula contains ridges, peaks, and valleys—an appearance similar to a mountain range. In the bottom left corner, a clearer area free of gas and dust appears black with speckled stars.

  5. Star Formation from the Carina Nebula to the Cosmic Cliffs

    Videos
    This scientific visualization traverses the vast star-forming region of the Carina Nebula Complex using multiwavelength data from NASA space telescopes. The narrated journey explores clusters of massive...
    Four images from the Carina Nebula Complex are spliced vertically at an angle. From left to right: Hubble’s view in brown, gray, and light blue tones with a brilliant white star cluster at center; a bright purple and pink observation by Chandra; a bright pink wash with tiny blue orbs imaged by Spitzer; and a Webb view showing bright blue at top with brown clouds at bottom, overlaid with stars.

  6. Flight to the Carina Nebula Complex

    Videos
    This visualization travels across interstellar space to the vast star-forming region of the Carina Nebula Complex. Starting with the 2D sky as seen from Earth, the sequence traces out the nearby constellations...
    At the center is a loose splotch of red, the Carina Nebula, set against the black background of space. Distant stars and galaxies are speckled across the scene. The very center of the Carina Nebula is brightest, almost white, with larger stars represented as dots. The gas and dust that make up the nebula take the loose form of flower petals, like an iris. The top “petal” appears in the rough shape of a lowercase V and becomes more diffuse and darker red the farther away the material is from the core. Off to its right is a small, loose red circle with several bright white stars within it. The lower petal of the nebula is also deep red, appearing more like a triangle with one peak centered at the bottom. That edge peters out into deeper red and becomes more translucent the lower it goes. Below that, a short horizontal line of deep semi-transparent red material appears. There is a prominent orange orb center-left at the top, and a blue one toward the bottom a little farther left.

  7. Program Guide & Resources: Stars

    Resource Guide
    Stars are giant balls of gas held together by their own gravity. They have different colors and sizes, and like humans, they have a life cycle: Stars are born, grow old, and eventually die.  With...
    Rectangular graphic illustrating the Stars program theme. The right four-fifths of the graphic consists of an infrared image of the Pillars of Creation from the Webb Space Telescope. The pillars are a ghostly blue-gray color with craggy finger-like tips. Running vertically along the left side of the image is a wide pink bar. In the lower half of the bar is a line drawing of a simple hand-held telescope on a tripod. The telescope points toward a circular field of view showing stylized stars with four-pointed diffraction patterns.

  8. The Pillars of Creation and the Interplay of Stars and Dust

    Videos
    This scientific visualization explores the iconic Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula and the various ways that stars and dust are intertwined in the process of star formation. In developing the contextual...
    Mosaic of the Pillars of Creation visualization model, composed of 4 rectangular strips oriented 45 degrees clockwise from vertical. Strips alternate between Hubble and Webb views of the visualization model, with each strip labeled: “Hubble” at lower right corners of first and third strips; “Webb” at upper left corners of the second and fourth strips. Webb strips have drop shadows that make it look like they are overlaid on top of larger Hubble image. Mosaic shows 3 vertical structures (pillars) of thick smoke-like material. Pillar edges are glowing, with thin wisps of material moving away into space. In Hubble strips, pillars are dark brown and opaque, on greenish blue background. In Webb strips, pillars are bright orange to brown with a distinct area of bright red at the top of middle pillar. A red star appears at the tip of a peak in the left pillar and the background is deep blue.

  9. Pillars of Creation 3D Model

    3D Object
    The Pillars of Creation are a formation of long thin dust clouds in the Eagle Nebula. They have been showcased in exquisite images from both the Hubble and Webb space telescopes. Their nickname derives...
    Photograph of a 3D printed model of the Pillars of Creation. The model is light gray with a silk-like texture, and the background is white. The three pillars rise up from a base that has a pancake-dome shape. The base is rotated about 60 degrees clockwise from the typical left-to-right orientation: The tallest pillar is at the back left at about 11 o’clock; the shortest is in the foreground right, at about 5 o’clock. The model is lit from several different angles to highlight the details. The pillars cast faint shadows toward the lower left. The pillars are craggy and stalagmite-like. The surfaces are smooth in some places, and pitted and grooved in others. Some edges are rounded and some appear sharp and jagged. The tall pillar at the back left and the middle pillar are solid all the way to the base. The small pillar at the front right is connected to the base by a web-like lattice made out of the same material as the rest of the model.

  10. Sonifications of Webb's Images of the Southern Ring Nebula

    Audio | Sonification
    NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope uncovered two views of the Southern Ring Nebula – in near-infrared light (at left) and mid-infrared light (at right) – and each has been adapted to sound....
    Video still frame showing a glowing vertical line as it sweeps across near-infrared and mid-infrared images that have been sonified.

  11. Sonifications of Webb's Image of the Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula

    Audio | Sonification
    There’s an immersive way to explore some of the first full-color infrared images and data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – through sound. Listeners can enter the complex soundscape...
    Video still frame showing a glowing vertical line as it sweeps across a near-infrared image that has been sonified.

  12. Ask the Astronomers Live: Image Your Own Erupting Star

    May 3, 2022 Virtual Science Talk

    What happened to make the star Eta Carinae become the second brightest star in the sky in 1843? Why did it then dim over the next century and once again brighten? How can YOU take images of this star and ...

  13. Eta Carinae: The Great Eruption of a Massive Star

    Videos
    Eta Carinae, or Eta Car, is famous for a brilliant and unusual outburst, called the "Great Eruption," observed in the 1840s. This visualization presents the story of that event and examines the...
    Eta Carinae

  14. Zoom to AG Carinae (Frame Sets)

    Videos
    This visualization starts with a wide-view of the Carina constellation and zooms down to the Hubble Space Telescope view of the massive star, AG Carinae. One of the brightest stars in our galaxy, AG Carinae...
    Bright star surrounded by shell of gas and dust

  15. Flight to AG Carinae (Frame Sets)

    Videos
    This visualization starts with the Hubble Space Telescope view of the massive star, AG Carinae. One of the brightest stars in our galaxy, AG Carinae undergoes eruptions that have ejected a small nebula...
    Bright star surrounded by shell of gas and dust