Abstract

The multi-institutional, multi-cultural, and multi-generational outreach team embedded in the NASA PUNCH mission has developed a well-vetted suite of novel Sun-related learning products and activities to prepare for the 2023 and 2024 solar eclipses and beyond. Our signature products include the 3-Hole-PUNCH pinhole projector, the PUNCH Team Cards, and our thermoform tactile-art representations of the Sun’s corona developed in collaboration with blind learners. All activities align with our Ancient and Modern Sun-watching theme and thus are of enduring value for education and outreach beyond the eclipses. The PUNCH Outreach theme includes our own personal Sun-watching experiences (whether they are everyday sunsets, or more exotic events like eclipses) and invites us to commune across time, space, and culture with our Sun-watching ancestors and with our NASA Sun-watching missions. While observing the solar corona during the totality phases of the April 2024 solar eclipse the Sun is at a time of high solar activity and thus we have a special opportunity to commune with Chaco Sun-watchers who may have recorded their impression of a stormy corona during the 1097 eclipse in an unusual curlicued petroglyph. PUNCH Outreach is among the numerous groups contributing to the NASA Heliophysics Big Year. We are celebrating NASA and natural wonders, including the 2024 eclipse, Parker Solar Probe’s closest pass through the corona in December 2024, and the 2025 PUNCH launch. We intend that the arts-integrated, multicultural, multisensory character of our PUNCH Outreach activities help prepare you for meaningful witnessing of these events and for ongoing attention to the extraordinary, ordinary star upon which all our lives depend.

1. Introduction

The outreach team embedded in the NASA PUNCH mission1 has developed a well-vetted suite of Sun- related learning activities2 to prepare for the 2023 and 2024 solar eclipses and beyond. All activities align with our Ancient and Modern Sun-watching theme (Figure 1) and thus are of enduring value for education and outreach beyond the eclipses.

Our outreach theme portrays NASA’s exploration of the Sun as a natural extension of age-old human dedication to observing and learning about the Sun’s rhythms and mysteries. Our activities invite learners to engage in meaningful personal Sun-watching related to both NASA and ancient ways of observing the Sun. Table 1 offers a sample of products developed to date, with additions on the way, including a Girl Scout patch, a full-dome planetarium film with live-interaction components, plus a kiosk model and digital interactive lessons related to a Chaco Canyon Sun-watching site called Rock of the Sun. We are also preparing and testing activities designed to discover the wonders of polarized light in our everyday environments using sunglasses that are polarized, like PUNCH!

PUNCH (Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere)3 is a NASA Small Explorer scheduled for launch in 2025. This is during a period of maximum solar activity. PUNCH (Figure 3) is designed to study the Sun and the space between Sun and Earth as one unified system. The mission explores the Sun’s outer atmosphere (called the solar corona) and how it expands to become the solar wind that fills the space between the Sun and Earth (called the inner heliosphere). PUNCH uses polarimeters (polarizing filters, like polarized sunglasses) in front of ordinary digital cameras to study the science of solar storms and other space weather features in the solar wind.

Solar storms like Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that disrupt the solar wind are more frequent during times of maximum activity in the Sun’s 11-year cycle. CMEs can imperil spacecraft and astronauts as well as enhance the beauty of Earth’s aurora. Just as our Sun-watching ancestors learned to predict and live well with the seasonal cycles, PUNCH and Parker Solar Probe4 are among the NASA Sun-watching missions helping our technological society live well with the solar magnetic activity cycle.

Parker observes from within the Sun’s outer corona, while PUNCH is designed to observe from Earth orbit and see the big-picture view of the inner heliosphere. The ground-based telescopes of the Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) project provide yet another perspective. CATE5 is deploying 35+ teams of citizen scientists along the totality path for the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse that crosses the United States from Texas to Maine. This provides 60 continuous minutes of polarized observation of the lower solar corona that can be used for detecting changes in its structure, perhaps caused by the presence of a CME. PUNCH Outreach is collaborating with both Parker and CATE to engage the public.

The “ancient” dimension of the PUNCH Outreach theme focuses on the compelling evidence for ancient Sun-watching in Chaco Canyon—a World Heritage site in northwestern New Mexico. A Chaco cultural site called Rock of the Sun includes a unique, hand-sized petroglyph (rock carving) on the southeastern facet (Figure 3) that the public can view. Our work at the site has enhanced the plausibility of interpreting this figure as an Ancestral Puebloan impression of the 1097 total solar eclipse with a CME in progress (Morrow et al., 2023; Schwing, 2017). Independent research has revealed that 1097 was a time of high solar magnetic activity on the Sun (Vaquero & Malville, 2014) and a time of high human activity in the Canyon. Although certainty is impossible, this rock art may be humanity’s earliest representation of a stormy solar corona in an enduring medium. The 2024 total solar eclipse also occurs during a period of solar maximum activity, offering a rich opportunity for communion with the Chaco observers.

The multi-institutional PUNCH Outreach team (Figure 4) has made a comprehensive, culturally respectful photo-documentation of the Rock of the Sun site in support of our 2025 planetarium film and the creation of several other outreach products. PUNCH Outreach is a collaboration among mission team members, a core collaborative of planetariums and science centers in the Four Corners states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona), Native American and Spanish-speaking youth and families, Blind and Low-Vision learners, and Girl Scouts. Institutional members of our collaborative include the Southwest Research Institute (home of the PUNCH mission) and Fiske Planetarium (both in Boulder, CO), Clark Planetarium (Salt Lake City, UT), the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (Albuquerque, NM), and the Planetary Science Institute (Tucson, AZ). Together we create arts-integrated, multicultural, multi-sensory activities that are enriching for all people, and exceptionally adaptable for all ages.

In the sections below we offer descriptions of the core products listed in Table 1 with an emphasis on our game-changing 3-Hole-PUNCH pinhole projector, our PUNCH Team Cards, and our thermoform tactile-art representations of the solar corona through history from the Chaco petroglyph to a NASA coronagraph. We vigorously field-test all our products and are disseminating them broadly during the Heliophysics Big Year6 for use during the eclipses and beyond. Our projector’s 3-hole design, vetted instructions for use, field-tested guidance for facilitation via short videos, and explanatory PowerPoint slides make the Projector a powerful learning tool for optics and image formation as well as a safe and playful means of indirectly observing the Sun, eclipsed or not. The March 2024 issue of The Physics Teacher (Morrow, 2024) featured a 2-page column on the Projector and the Chaco petroglyph. We encourage you to explore this article and to enjoy our PUNCH Outreach Products page7 for more information and useful resources.

2. The 3-Hole-PUNCH Pinhole Projector

The design of the 3-Hole-PUNCH Pinhole Projector (Figure 5) is partly inspired by the work of the late Exploratorium artist Robert Miller.8 In this context “pinhole” means a lens-less hole of any shape that is large enough for sunlight streaming through to be seen on a projection surface in broad daylight, yet small enough to form an (albeit fuzzy) image of the Sun at arm-length distances. The PUNCH Outreach designers used a combination of math and experimentation to determine an effective size and spacing for the Projector’s three holes. The Projector itself is six inches tall.

The Projector’s design and development team included the author, R. Bigelow, B. Ingermann, Spanish translators M. Bevington and M. Rosario-Franco, plus dozens of others within and beyond the mission team who served as providers of photographs, reviewers, and field testers. Other team members who played vital roles in creating supporting materials for the Projector include M. Zawaski and S. Wolf.

We strongly urge you to view the three 6-minute “how-to” videos9 on YouTube which encapsulate the results of our team’s extensive field testing and show you how to lead inquiry that maximizes wonder and curiosity. The Projector is a great learning companion to solar protection glasses, whether or not the Sun is eclipsed. See Figure 6 for a summary of the “aha” moments that delight learners of all ages.

During engagements, the facilitator starts by holding their hand behind the Projector holes and positioning the Projector in front of a projection surface. The facilitator asks learners to predict what they will see when their hand is removed and sunlight streams through the holes onto the projection surface. Learners of all ages and educational backgrounds predict they will see light shapes that match the shape of the holes. The facilitator then ensures that the Projector is close enough to the surface so that their prediction is validated when they remove their hand (1 in Figure 6). The facilitator then guides learners to watch the projection surface as the Projector is pulled farther away toward the light source (the Sun).

The first “aha” is when all the shapes of light turn to round (2 in Figure 6). The second “aha” is when round shapes of light become even larger than the Projector holes as the Projector is moved even farther away (3 Figure 6). The facilitator then claims that the holes of the Projector are each forming images that are the shape of the light source, and asks: “What is the shape of the light source?” The facilitator then invites everyone to observe the Sun directly through solar protection glasses to experience the Sun’s stark roundness and thereby help to affirm the idea of non-round holes forming images of the round Sun. If available, an excellent follow-up to this experience is our indoor demonstration of this effect.

The PUNCH Outreach indoor tabletop demonstration of pinhole imaging (Figure 7) is not just for “rainy days.” The demo reinforces the idea that all three Projector holes form images that are the inverted shape of the light source. To control that shape, we cover the flat, lit surface of an inexpensive LED desk lamp with masks cut out of paper plates. All ages light up with wonder and curiosity when triangle, round, and square holes project three stars, crescents, or inverted F-shapes onto the projection surface.

We strongly encourage learners to make the connection between the holes of the 3-Hole-PUNCH pinhole projector and the small rectangular gaps at the edges of window blinds or the odd-shaped gaps between the leaves of a tree. These gaps also form images that are the shape of the round Sun. Field-testing has revealed that many of us are not adept at detecting pinhole images of the non-eclipsed Sun without explicit coaching. Teaching people how to perceive natural pinhole images of the Sun hiding in plain sight in our everyday environments can open them to a lifetime of enjoyable observation wherever sunlight streams through small holes (Figure 8).

We intend that our supporting resources help empower you to bring pinhole imaging to the forefront of instruction about optics and image formation. Our downloadable PDF and PowerPoint presentations10 clarify how pinhole imaging works and offer images like those in Figure 8 and Figure 9 plus classic ray diagrams that explain and compare “pinhole” imaging to that of a lens.

The field of archaeo-optics (Watson, n.d.)suggests that pre-historic humans may have made use of pinhole imaging and the associated camera obscura effect to support time tracking, rock paintings, and ceremony. Today we know that pinhole optical principles are the foundation of how our telescopes, eyes, and the PUNCH cameras work!

3. The PUNCH Team Cards

PUNCH is the most “eclipse-relevant” mission currently in development at NASA (of course there are operational missions, like Parker Solar Probe and others that are also relevant). Like most space science missions, PUNCH involves hundreds of people all over the world who work hard to make it successful. Our current deck of 18 PUNCH Team Cards features only a small sample of these professionals (Figure 10). Nonetheless, these cards reveal and stimulate discussion about the diversity of people, the wide variety of roles, and the teamwork needed to make a NASA space science mission happen. The Cards help convey the message that NASA science is for everyone! The rest of this section provides insights about what we have learned through field testing of the Cards. We intend this to benefit other missions or Centers interested in developing their own Cards.

The initial motivation for developing the Team Cards came from our Girl Scout collaborator who asked that we have Women-in-STEM cards for our Ancient and Modern Sun-watching Patch. This request combined with the intention expressed in our NASA proposal “to broaden the humanity of professionals working on a NASA mission,” and thus we expanded on our partner’s idea to create a more inclusive set of Team Cards. At first, we called them “Trading Cards,” but easily abandoned this term when an African American colleague expressed dismay about being “traded.” The PUNCH Team Cards are not bought and traded but offered freely as a public benefit to all who find them of interest.

There is a standing invitation for anyone on (or formally affiliated with) the mission team to be included in the PUNCH Team Cards, however, there is no obligation whatsoever to participate. We fully honor those who decline to become public role models and we have learned to distinguish between firm rejection and initial hesitancy that might later yield to our respectful, patient pursuit of a more inclusive deck of cards of greater benefit to youth. Each person currently featured found time and courage to complete an extended questionnaire that invited them to share more deeply about how they show up for their PUNCH-related job and why it matters. Our questionnaire also calls upon participants to share something of their sense of adventure, playfulness, or personal artistry, and to provide photos of themselves in response to the invitation: “Please send a photo of yourself doing something that enlivens you.”

Our development team edits and processes photos and questionnaire responses for the cards collaboratively for final approval by the person being featured. This usually involves three to four iterations for each card to ensure that team members shine brightly with a combination of their leading-edge professionalism and their uniqueness as human beings. Our development process stimulates team-building dialogue among mission team members and takes full advantage of our outreach effort being embedded within the PUNCH mission. We worked on the responses of several team members before deciding on the common set of sections shown in Figure 11 below for the backs of the Team Cards.

Field testing to date reveals that younger learners are most attracted to the Inspiring Animal section, the lively pictures on the front, and the card borders with the four bright colors and color-blind accessible designs. Older learners spend more time exploring the sections that address Mission Roles, Fun Sun Facts, and Words that Help Guide Me. There are opportunities for new knowledge about the Sun and the mission, and invitations for insight regarding “science as a human endeavor” and what it means to be a team. Learners can discover and discuss real-life examples of how social and emotional intelligence play in pursuit of leading-edge science and technology (STEM). The “Words that Guide Me” section includes quotes from religious scripture, poets, philosophers, teachers, mentors, and parents, as well as self-developed wisdom based on life experience.

Field testers have also observed simple yet transformative “aha” moments as learners explore the cards…for example that a woman can be both a solar scientist and a dancer, or that a person can be both deeply religious and devoted to the success of a NASA science mission. The diverse cultural backgrounds represented by the cards allow us to convey a message of inclusivity and support for the modern adage, “If you can see it, you can be it.”

During field testing, learners expressed interest in having hands-on physical cards to complement the online cards, and in having the opportunity to create their own cards. These products have proven preferable for in-person engagement with individuals and as a family activity (Figure 12).

The PUNCH Team Cards demonstrate an uncommon approach to providing inspiring, relatable role models. Card content helps to broaden the humanity of PUNCH professionals in a light-hearted way. The Create-Your-Own-Card activity stimulates meaningful peer-to-peer social interaction and inter-generational conversation about NASA, the Sun, and personal values.

4. Seeing the Sun’s Corona with Your Hands

Another signature product co-created by the multi-generational, interdisciplinary members of the PUNCH Outreach team is a set of eight thermoform tactile-art representations of the solar corona. Nicole Johnson led the development of this method of creating tactiles as part of her doctoral dissertation (Johnson, 2023). Figure 13 offers photos of three of these tactiles and the images they represent.

The author, a solar physicist by training and Chaco archaeoastronomer by personal inclination, led the selection of the images used in the 8-tactile set to tell a story over time of ways humans have recorded their observations of the solar corona from the ancient Chaco petroglyph to contemporary NASA coronagraph images. The tactile set allows both blind and sighted learners to participate in a guided inquiry about the strengths and weaknesses of interpreting the Chaco petroglyph as an Ancestral Puebloan impression of the 1097 Total Solar Eclipse with a solar storm in the corona. The inquiry is based on what we know today about how the corona can appear when storms like Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are in progress.

We developed these tactile-art representations with (and for) the blind yet they also offer cross-sensory experience for the sighted via an activity called, “Seeing with Your Hands” (Figure 14 and Figure 15).

5. Birthday Sunrises on a Chaco Canyon Horizon

As school children most of us were told that “the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west” and that “the solstices marked the first day of a new season.” Our activity called Birthday Sunrises on a Chaco Canyon Horizon helps correct the misunderstandings that derive from these well-intended teachings, while also encouraging cross-cultural awareness and respect.

This activity features the view to the eastern horizon as seen from the west side of one of the most astronomically remarkable structures in Chaco Canyon – a 60-foot diameter Great Kiva that some call Casa Rinconada (Figure 16). The surrounding area is open to visitors, but not the Kiva itself.

Our activity invites participants to consider how the position of sunrise changes throughout the year and how this can be used to create a so-called “horizon calendar” for tracking time and seasons. Field testing at conferences reveals that most people, including modern scientists and science educators, have lost touch with this natural rhythm, and yet are utterly delighted and inspired to learn how it works for predicting their birthday sunrise and any other time of year.

6. Dancing Up a Solar Storm

In addition to the PUNCH Team Cards, our collaboration with the Girl Scouts also inspired us to begin developing an activity we call Dancing Up a Solar Storm. We have dancers on the PUNCH team, including our ballet-dancing Mission Scientist, Nicki Viall, and our scientist-dancer Heather Elliott. Heather loves to move and flow with lightweight scarves, making shapes and motions that correspond to features on the Sun and in the heliosphere related to her research (Figure 18, left). In February 2023 she provided a live demonstration for girls participating in a prototype Girl Scout patch-event convened in collaboration with the Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas Council and their Girl Experience Manager, R. Vara.

The Cadette Girl Scout pictured (Figure 18, right) was among the patch-earning Girl Scouts of all ages inspired to playful and meaningful movement by Heather’s presentation. As of this writing, we are making changes to this activity and the accompanying resources due to the lessons we learned at this pivotal event. This activity has enormous potential to bring remarkable joy to learning about sunspots, prominences, the Parker Spiral, CMEs, and other space weather features between the Sun and Earth that PUNCH will be imaging with unprecedented quality. There is no believing the Sun is a featureless ball, nor that the heliosphere between the Sun and Earth is empty after participating in our Dancing Up a Solar Storm activity.

7. Conclusion

The author is privileged to lead in service to the PUNCH Public Engagement team which is an extraordinary co-creative group of professionals representing multiple institutions, multiple cultures and languages, multiple generations, multiple skills, and multiple disciplines. There is a collective genius that emerges from our interactions and collaborations that goes beyond what any one person or institution could accomplish on their own. We are privileged to be operating inside a NASA space mission like PUNCH, with supportive leadership and ready access to friendly, mutually beneficial exchanges between experts in solar science and outreach that enhances the quality, accuracy, and humanity of our work.

We are a learning team, committed to rigorous field-testing and evaluation of each product or event we develop. Working in a multi-partner collaborative has offered us numerous natural opportunities for receiving formative feedback on our outreach products as they are generously included in larger events already planned by our partners. Moreover, there are countless examples of individual PUNCH Outreach team members expanding their skills and knowledge as needed to support one another and to contribute to the success of our common mission of maximizing our benefit to the lives of diverse people. We do not target audiences for impact. We collaborate with and learn from historically marginalized populations to co-create arts-integrated, multi-cultural, multi-sensory learning opportunities that are enriching for all people.

We have not developed just another pinhole projector with our brands and logos on it. We have intentionally created a game-changing, vigorously vetted learning tool whose careful design we intend to offer freely to anyone who would like to put their own brand on it. Our first experiment with this transference is ongoing with the NASA SHIELD DRIVE Science Center.11

We aspire to make leading-edge NASA science accessible and cross-culturally relevant to diverse people while inviting them to reconnect with the natural world. Natural phenomena like pinhole imaging, polarized light, and the shifting position of sunrises and sunsets can be a delightful source of wonder, curiosity, and inspiration to share with others. We modern humans have ready access to information about our Sun-watching past, present, and future. The PUNCH Outreach Ancient and Modern Sun-Watching theme invites our personal encounters with the Sun to evoke an appreciation for our Sun-watching ancestors and awareness of NASA Sun-watching missions.

PUNCH Outreach is among the groups contributing to the NASA Heliophysics Big Year.⁹ We are celebrating NASA and natural wonders, including the April 2024 total solar eclipse, Parker Solar Probe’s closest pass through the corona in December 2024,12 and the 2025 PUNCH launch.13

May the diverse modalities of our PUNCH Outreach products14 help prepare you for meaningful witnessing of these events and for ongoing attention to the extraordinary, ordinary star upon which all our lives depend.

Acknowledgements

PUNCH Outreach is part of the PUNCH mission, a NASA Heliophysics mission managed by the Southwest Research Institute and funded via NASA’s Small Explorers program. Craig DeForest is the Principal Investigator. Sarah Gibson is our Project Scientist. Nicki Viall is our NASA Mission Scientist.

Contact: [email protected]