Michelle Gierach has a passion for Earth Science. She serves as a project scientist for the Physical Oceanography Distributed Data Archive Center (PO.DAAC) and ocean scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Remember to never look directly at the Sun without proper safety equipment.

What is a solar eclipse?

Steve Nerem is the leader of NASA’s Sea Level Change team. His project, Observation-Driven Projections of Future Regional Sea Level Change, focuses on using NASA satellite and in situ observations and climate modeling to estimate future regional sea level change.

Since 1997 I have been the Physical Oceanography Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters AND I am a dedicated sea-going oceanographer.  It stills feels kind of crazy what comes around in life.  I write my short career biography here for students who may consider working in oceanography or for NASA or both.

In this activity students will make observations about the objects, size, distance, and motion of the Sun, Earth, and Moon during a solar eclipse and manipulate slides to show the relationships.

This interactive takes students through the basic mechanics of a solar eclipse, using a NASA Space Place Handout, including an optional eclipse art activity.

In this activity students will calculate the ratio of the size of the sun to the moon and the distance of the sun and moon from Earth to determine the type of solar eclipse possible.

This NASA visualization shows sea surface salinity observations (September 2011-September 2014). Students review the video and answer questions.

This mini-lesson features time-series graphs of mean salinity at the surface for the Arctic and Antarctic regions. A series of questions guides students in their analysis.

In this mini lesson, students use in-water profiles of historical ocean data to analyze how sea surface salinity varies with depth.