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In partnership with theUse this model of the Milky Way and other galaxies to indicate relative distances to other galaxies
This quick, fun game shows players the value of supernovae in the universe. Players discover that almost all elements that make up the Earth and all its living things were made inside stars that go supernova.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the landing of humans on the Moon, the Night Sky Network is releasing new Moon handouts and activities as well as an Apollo presentation.
Find asteroids in a star field and discover why astronomers are locating even more asteroids using powerful infrared telescopes like NEOWISE.
All of the people on this banner work together to capture the beautiful images we see
The My Sky Tonight team has created a set of fun, science-rich astronomy activities for pre-K children, as well as supporting resources for educators on how to effectively work with young children and engage them in science practices.
Many astronomy topics come up over and over again. This is a list of NSN articles about some popular astronomy topics you can use.
This activity helps you demonstrate how transits of our Sun by Venus and Mercury work, and how transits are used to detect exoplanets.
This set of 7 activities and demos will engage visitors with dark skies, color filters, sky legends from around the world, and the people who make astronomy happen.
Has anyone ever asked you if you could see the flag on the Moon with a telescope? Want to know what the 25X magnification on that telescope means? Find out why size matters with telescopes when it comes to light collecting
Give this Celestial Treasure Hunt handout to your star party visitors before they tour the telescopes so they can hunt for different types of astronomical objects!
Helpful resources for club coordinators to help them navigate the NSN program's resources, website, and club & event management tools.
Discover the secrets of light and filters with this interactive, visitor-led inquiry into the use of filters by astronomers, artists, and code-breakers
Using dry ice and simple household materials, this comet concoction is a big hit with kids and adults alike.
Create craters on models of the Moon and Earth in this fun and messy outreach activity. Investigate the properties of Earth that hide past cratering events, such as movement of the crust, erosion, water, and a protective atmosphere.
Find out how dark your skies are with these simple tools that demonstrate limiting magnitude with two famous constellations: Orion and Scorpius.
Many people think that the moon doesn't rotate, but it actually does! This fun activity helps you demonstrate this rather unintuitive fact using your visitors, a few props, and the Sun's light.
This large banner illustrates the actual physical impacts that space rocks have had on the Earth/Moon system. One side features impacts on Earth; the other, the craters of the Moon.
This engaging banner encourages your visitors to guess when various kinds of organisms first developed during Earth's history; you can then reveal the actual timeline! The back of this banner features some of the watery worlds of our Solar System.
These 11 cards can be used at a solar telescope, for visitors waiting in line, or as a stand-alone station.
worlds in our Solar System stretches our minds and excites our imaginations like nothing else. It's the only way to answer some of our deepest questions.
Discover evening Moon phases and lunar science with these printable cards.
Explore what planets we can see in the night - and morning - skies, plus the positions of some NASA missions in this fun banner-based activity.
Your visitors become teams of scientists living on a planet orbiting a distant star. They are on the threshold of exploring their own planetary system for the first time
Find out about the extreme conditions that life can not only survive in, but thrive! This activity can lead to lively discussions about the latest NASA science on other worlds in our solar system.
Try out some best practices for public engagement with girls with help from these five short videos.
Find all Toolkit Manuals in one place with all of the activities in the original Toolkits listed in one place
Here you'll find resources for amateur astronomers to support the Girl Scout Space Science badges and make meaningful connections with the girls.
Shielding lights improves our safety and visibility, along with improving our view of the night sky. Light pollution has health effects on animals, including people! Find out more about how proper shielding on lights can benefit everyone!
Set up a fun and action-packed activity to give your visitors a real hands-on feel for the science behind gravity assists for spacecraft like Voyager and New Horizons. This also helps get the blood flowing!
Discover some basics about gravity by using a bucket with stretchy fabric over it to allow visitors to experiment with marbles and weights.
"Growing Your Astronomy Club" is a series of three videos that offer ideas and advice gathered from research with amateur astronomy clubs across the United States.
Many beautiful meteor showers light up our skies throughout the year. This handout gives out some vital information about meteors and when to spot them, and is appropriate for all audiences.
Just how far can we see into the universe?
Essay by Andrew Fraknoi, detailing how when you are "sitting still" you may actually be moving quite fast! It all depends, of course, on your perspective.
International Observe the Moon Night is a wonderful chance to connect with fans of our moon from all around the world! This resource page contains links to many moon-related Night Sky Network outreach activities, handouts, and related resources.
These simple demonstrations are a great way to illustrate the path of light as it reflects off of mirrors and how this is used in telescopes, especially if you have ever been asked why the Moon appears "flipped" or "upside down" in your eyepiece!
Discover how we learn about stars and the atmospheres of exoplanets by examining the light in greater detail.
Learn about legends told about the night sky around the world and throughout time with this activity. Create your own story about a constellation visible in tonight's sky.
Participants imagine themselves inside a large star at the end of its life, just as it is about to go supernova.
Aliens are a favorite topic for many visitors to public astronomy events. This toolkit is designed to take science fiction questions and direct them toward scientific facts and exciting new discoveries being made in the search for life outside Earth.
What happens when rain or inclement weather rolls in, and you need to do something with your visitors while you wait for the skies to clear up? Well, after you double check to make sure you've safely stashed your telescope, try out one of these popular ni
The artwork for reproducing the Lives of Stars Diagram and the Periodic Table of the Elements from the SUPERNOVA! ToolKit can be downloaded here(.PDF).
Discover the life cycle of stars and when supernovae happen with this activity and handout.
Learn all about meteorites with this hands-on activity: where they come from, how they got here, and what they are made of. Compare the characteristics of meteorites and Earth rocks in this engaging activity.
NASA's Night Sky Notes are free monthly articles designed for your club's newsletter, website, and other local papers and newsletters, featuring stargazing and NASA science to share with your communities. Find the latest articles- and archives - here!
Discover a variety of myths about the Moon with this resource.
The Astronomical League produces monthly star maps in both English and Spanish. We have mirrored downloadable copies of the latest guides inside.
The Night Sky Network offers many benefits to member clubs, including club management tools, publicity, materials, and much more!
This simple and engaging activity explains nuclear fusion and how radiation is generated by stars, using marshmallows as a delicious model.
This set of cards is designed to give telescope operators and other night sky interpreters a new way of explaining the night sky to your scope's visitors. You can download the PDFs to your tablet or even print them out onto cardstock.
This is the entire manual for the Our Galaxy, Our Universe outreach toolkit. Two of the most misunderstood concepts in astronomy are distance and scale. Related to those are the difference between the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe.
This ToolKit provides activities and demonstrations that explore the Sun and its powerful magnetic fields, how these fields generate the features we observe, and how the Sun's magnetic activity affects our way of life and technologies here on Earth.
This presentation includes a PowerPoint (.ppt) and suggested script (.pdf), along with suggested activities for presenting a scale model of the Solar System compared to our Galaxy. This is often referred to as the "Birdseed Galaxy" presentation.
Mentally construct a model of our place in the Milky Way Galaxy and the distribution of stars with just a coin and some birdseed.
Download the artwork below to make a large banner showcasing a one-meter Sun. You can take these files to a local print shop and create a vinyl banner for use with the models in the Scaling the Solar System activity.
The "Passport Through Time" handout shows the difference between each of three different distance categories: within our Solar System, within the Milky Way, and within the rest of the universe.
You've seen the phases of the Moon. Did you know we also see the phases of two planets? Here is a great way to explain why we see phases of Venus when looking through the telescope.
Treat your telescope's visitors to these stickers and celebrate viewing a featured planet!
How far apart is everything in our solar system? It can be hard to imagine, but this activity can help! Try out this simple Pocket Solar System activity that is sure to get an "Ah-ha!" moment from your visitors, using just a marker and a strip of paper.
Try out this fun, easy, and very practical astronomy demo that can be done with just a couple of UV beads! Explore ultraviolet (UV) light and how it can be blocked by different materials in this open-ended activity, great for even the youngest visitors.
You can prepare visitors to observe through your telescope by helping them understand why they see what they see and how the telescope works to enhance their vision. The activity includes discussions of averted vision and field of view.
Keith Enevoldsen's Think Zone hosts a service that allows you to create a scale model of the solar system superimposed on a Google map/satellite image, with the Sun centered on the address you entered.
Explore the asteroid belt in this astronomy activity and learn some surprising truths about just how difficult it would actually be to navigate. It may not be as tightly packed as Hollywood would have you believe!
Full manual for the Shadows & Silhouettes ToolKit. Hands-on activities on Moon phases, lunar and solar eclipses, transits, and Venus phases.
This video series is designed to help amateur astronomers make their time with the public and clubs more enjoyable when performing astronomy outreach.
Use this moon map to identify some of its most famous features, find out where the astronauts landed, and what fills its "seas."
Solar eclipses happen on average twice a year somewhere on Earth. These activities show what's happening and why!
A set of sheets from NASA, full of fun facts about major objects in our solar system.
This set of playing cards can help you kick start discussions of the characteristics of asteroids, comets, planets, and moons in our solar system. Help your visitors engage in scientific thinking by sorting objects into categories by shared features.
Use this presentation to show how space weather directly effects our way of life on Earth.
Use a flour model of the surface of the Moon to show how shadows show more details than direct light. Participants see the difference between what is observable during a full Moon and a partially dark Moon.
Show your visitors that watching the sun set also means watching the night rise. Turn away from the setting sun to watch the shadow of our planet rise up in the east as night rises during these long winter nights.
Use a star map and mark the current locations of the planets and Moon along the ecliptic. Or find out what stars will someday go supernova. Can't see a black hole? No problem - find them with these Star Maps!
Use this banner with views of the Sun in different wavelengths to prepare visitors for observing the Sun. See how different wavelengths of light reveal a variety of features caused by the Sun's magnetic activity.
There is more to the Universe than meets the (human) eye! We get a better understanding of the Universe by looking in space using detectors for energy invisible to our eyes.
This activity is a great way to organize a star party, and gives visitors context to what they will be viewing as they tour the telescopes and observe a variety of naked-eye and telescopic treats that occupy the Summer Triangle.
Have you ever seen the Milky Way overhead in a dark sky? Did you know that's the disk of our galaxy - from inside?
Observing the sky is a part of being human, and eclipses are no exception. These tellings have been entrusted to us, so let us honor the cultures who have shared them with us.
Model the habitable zone around stars and how an atmosphere influences the habitability of a planet.
Find out about the NASA Kepler Mission which is searching for Earth-like planets around other stars.
You can show the basics of how telescopes collect light with these activities, by using just a few props.
Using magnets and magnetic marbles, demonstrate the effect black holes have on nearby stars.
Discover that the Sun is the ultimate source of energy for almost everything that we do in our daily lives! Participants each use cards to build up an "energy chain" leading back to our Sun in a truly "hands-on" activity, perfect for almost any occasion.
Using simple materials, participants create 3D models of the Earth, Moon and Sun and demonstrate solar and lunar eclipses.
This activity helps explain why telescopes in space can be more effective than telescopes on Earth. You can demonstrate why stars twinkle and show how atmospheric conditions impact the quality of what telescopes can see..
This activity gives your visitors simple 3D models to help demonstrate the science of why the Moon has phases.
This set of activities provides tools to help your visitors understand the two main reasons views through the telescope do not look like photographs from NASA's space telescopes and popular astrophotographers.
Vsitors can experiment with marbles and weights to discover some basics about gravity and orbits, using just a bucket covered by stretchy fabric as your model of spacetime.
Create 3D models of the Earth, Moon and Sun and demonstrate solar and lunar eclipse in this group activity. Show why we do not see eclipses at every full and new Moon.
This activity describes techniques scientists use to find planets orbiting other stars, wth a focus on both the wobble and transit methods of detection.
Use a set of scaled balls and beads to show the relative sizes of the planets, the Moon, Ceres, and Pluto to each other and to the Sun. This permanent model can be used over and over again in many ways. Handout included,and can be downloaded separately.
