Our Star, Up Close
Students travel from the Sun's core through its layers, magnetic activity, storms and corona, then trace how solar energy shapes Earth.
Grades 5-8About 15 minutes of narrated flight, plus discussion stops8 stops
The full guide, with the 40-minute plan, discussion key points, exit ticket, activities, transcript and PDF, comes with a teacher license. Already licensed? Use Open the full guide.
What students will see and do
Students fly to the Sun and stay with it through six stops covering its size, core, inner layers, sunspots, storms and corona, then visit the Moon to learn about eclipses and Earth to follow the Sun's energy home. Aetherion narrates throughout, and the class pauses for discussion at the Moon stop (how we learn what stars are made of) and the Earth stop (tracing food energy back to the Sun).
Learning objectives
- Describe the Sun's main layers in order from core to corona and one key feature of each
- Explain how nuclear fusion in the core turns a small amount of mass into a large amount of energy
- Connect sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections to the Sun's twisting magnetic field
- Identify at least three ways the Sun's energy and gravity affect Earth
NGSS connections
| MS-ESS1-2 | Students use the Sun's gravity, holding 99.8 percent of the solar system's mass, to explain why planets stay in orbit. |
|---|---|
| MS-ESS1-3 | Students analyze scale properties of the Sun, such as its size compared with Earth, its layer temperatures and its distance. |
Stops on this journey
- A Star Up Close
- The Core
- The Long Way Out
- Sunspots and Magnetism
- Flares and Solar Storms
- The Corona and a Brave Probe
- When the Moon Hides the Sun (discussion stop)
- The Sun and Your World (discussion stop)
Vocabulary
- plasma
- nuclear fusion
- core
- radiative zone
- convection zone
- photosphere
- sunspot
- corona