A new Sun-centered and science-focused coloring book produced by NASA in partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) is now available for people to learn while showing their artistic side.
The book, titled “Journey Through the Heliosphere: The Sun-Earth System in Color,” has twenty-eight, 11”x14” pages, and includes science facts and coloring pages for ten themes, including the Sun’s magnetic field, the solar wind, the aurora, eclipses, and how the Sun influences Earth. The book’s art and language is designed to engage with and educate students in grades 6-12 and adults. It includes a reference chart of solar terms in seven of Alaska’s many Indigenous languages and features a glossary of scientific terms relating to heliophysics on the last two pages.
Staff from NASA, Oregon State University, the UAF International Arctic Research Center, and the Geophysical Institute’s outreach and design teams collaborated to bring Journey Through the Heliosphere to life over the course of two years. Lynda McGilvary, who leads the Geophysical Institute’s education outreach team, praises this group effort. “It leveraged the strengths of each organization in a way that resulted in something that will support the goal of increasing America’s heliophysics literacy one coloring page at time,” she said. “I think it was a labor of love for us.”
NASA came up with the coloring book idea as part of its Heliophysics Education Activation Team, kn …