Solar Music

Using helioseismology to see inside our Sun

Background | Procedure | Follow-up | Related

Related Activities

It is assumed that this lesson will take place in the context of a larger unit on the sun. It is recommended that the class do some activities to set the stage for this lesson. Suggestions include:

Motion of the Sun in the sky
Use the plastic Sun Tracking Hemisphere Kit (available from Learning Technologies at http://www.starlab.com/pspl.html) to track the apparent motion of the Sun in the sky.

Do shadow measurements at several times during the day to track the Sun's apparent motion.

Make Sundials

Surface of the Sun
Use a SunSpotter (also available from Learning Technologies at http://www.starlab.com/ltiss.html) to view the surface of the sun.

View the current H-alpha image of the sun on the web at http://www.sunspot.noao.edu/DSTWWW/sunpic.html

View recent solar images from the National Solar Observatory on the web at http://www.nso.noao.edu/diglib/recent.html

References:

For further reading you may begin with the following sources:

Browne MW. "Deep solar rumblings may offer key to sun's inner structure." The New York Times, B5, 24-Oct-95.
Leibacher JW, Noyes RW, Toomre J and Ulrich RK. "Helioseismology." Scientific American 253(3):48-57, 1985.
GONG Helioseismology http://helios.tuc.noao.edu/helioseismology.html
The Singing Sun http://solar-center.stanford.edu/singing/singing.html
Helioseismology Introduction http://soi.stanford.edu/results/heliowhat.html
The original Solar Music Module, by Frank Hill

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