PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Space Physics
This article is part of the Research TopicHeliophysics Big Year: Education and Public Outreach ReportsView all 7 articles
Engaging and Educating Eclipse Observers In the Heliophysics Big Year
Provisionally accepted
- 1Rice Space Institute, Wiess School of Natural Sciences, Rice University, Houston, United States
- 2Rice University, Houston, United States
- 3Southwest Research Institute Boulder, Boulder, United States
- 4Houston Museum of Natural Science, Houston, United States
- 5National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, United States
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The “Heliophysics Big Year” was an extended “year” where major solar events engaged the public. NASA and NSF funded several projects to educate the public on the science of the heliosphere and safe observing practices. In response to this initiative, we worked with other teams to create and disseminate accurate yet engaging information. We expanded our eclipse website (https://space.rice.edu/eclipse/) with activities, citizen science projects, resources, training videos, suggested equipment, and links to other compendia. We worked with the Citizen CATE 2024 project as Southwest Regional Coordinator, training the state coordinators and their teams with the specialized equipment and procedures. We trained teachers at local, regional, national, and international workshops, providing eclipse viewing cards, lenses to make “solar cup projectors,” a pattern for a safe viewing screen, and additional materials. With other teams, we made presentations to the media at SciLine in San Antonio, and hosted public events to demonstrate safe eclipse viewing techniques. The most lasting and impactful product was our planetarium show “Totality,” which was distributed free of license fees. Over 180,000 views of the show and its animations have been documented. We improved our space weather forecasting site (https://mms.rice.edu) and used our email lists (14,000+) to send out real-time warning of the major solar storm of May 10–11. In total, we provided nearly two million people with Heliophysics information. In summary, the federal/private/business partnerships meant that the events of this “year” were a fun, safe, learning experience for tens of millions of Americans.
Keywords: Space weather, educational resources, citizen science, Planetarium contents, solar corona, Solar observation device, Heliophysics Big Year, Space weather prediction models
Received: 08 Sep 2025; Accepted: 06 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Reiff, Caspi, Sumners, Gardner and Kovac. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Patricia H Reiff, reiff@rice.edu
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