Touch the Earth takes a multimedia approach to teach middle school students about the Earth's biomes – areas on Earth with similar climate, soil and vegetation - using sound and visual aids, tactile and colored graphics, large print and Braille. It was developed for Blind and Deaf users as well as students who learn best with a multimedia approach. Published with the support of NASA Headquarters' Office of Earth Science, Education programs, the book was developed by Elissa Levine, a soil scientist who recently retired from the Biospheric Sciences Branch at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., science writer Amy Hansen, tactile graphic creator, Noreen Grice, geographer, Asad Ullah, and producer, Izolda Traktenberg.

"Much of the Earth science that we do at NASA uses remote sensing, which means measuring something about an object without actually being in contact with it. This book brings home the importance of being able to 'touch the Earth' in some way or another," said Eric Brown de Colstoun, Coordinator of Earth Science Education and Public Outreach at Goddard. "This message should resonate strongly with all audiences, including the visually and hearing challenged, on this 40th anniversary of Earth Day."

The book will be on display at the "NASA Village" along with two supplemental DVDs explaining more about the biomes on each continent. One DVD enhances the book's content with pictures and a signing avatar using American Sign Language to help students who are deaf and hearing impaired. The second DVD has the same enhanced content with pictures, voice and music.

"In a way this book should be exciting for a broader audience that hasn't been reached before, whether the children are blind, deaf, or just want other kinds of tools for learning," remarked Hansen. "Hopefully it will give the kids a chance to better understand Earth's biomes and how all systems on the Earth function together."

Visitors to the Earth Day Celebration will be able to view the Earth's continents in tactile graphics, Braille, and color imagery on a full-size poster - another supplementary educational aid included with each copy of Touch the Earth. The book also includes guidance for teachers on how to incorporate its content into National Science Education standards and provides resources for additional information.

"I hope people will touch it and understand the interactive quality of it," Hansen said. "People don't realize how much of the Sahara takes up Africa," she said of a biome description. "I think it's more dramatic to feel that it's almost a third of the continent."

Touch the Earth is the latest in a series of tactile books on NASA science topics including Touch the Universe and Touch the Sun. Individuals can order a copy of the Touch the Earth tactile book from the National Federation of the Blind Independence Market: http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Independence_Market.asp

For more information and a schedule of NASA's Earth Day activities, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earthday

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Some of the images from the spacecraft show never-before-seen detail of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close-ups of activity on the sun’s surface. The spacecraft also has made the first high-resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths.

"These initial images show a dynamic sun that I had never seen in more than 40 years of solar research,” said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "SDO will change our understanding of the sun and its processes, which affect our lives and society. This mission will have a huge impact on science, similar to the impact of the Hubble Space Telescope on modern astrophysics.”

Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun. During its five-year mission, it will examine the sun's magnetic field and also provide a better understanding of the role the sun plays in Earth's atmospheric chemistry and climate. Since launch, engineers have been conducting testing and verification of the spacecraft’s components. Now fully operational, SDO will provide images with clarity 10 times better than high-definition television and will return more comprehensive science data faster than any other solar observing spacecraft

SDO will provide critical data that will improve the ability to predict these space weather events. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., built, operates and manages the SDO spacecraft for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

“I’m so proud of our brilliant work force at Goddard, which is rewriting science textbooks once again.” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA. “This time Goddard is shedding new light on our closest star, the sun, discovering new information about powerful solar flares that affect us here on Earth by damaging communication satellites and temporarily knocking out power grids. Better data means more accurate solar storm warnings.”

The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager maps solar magnetic fields and looks beneath the sun’s opaque surface. The experiment will decipher the physics of the sun’s activity, taking pictures in several very narrow bands of visible light. Scientists will be able to make ultrasound images of the sun and study active regions in a way similar to watching sand shift in a desert dune. The instrument’s principal investigator is Phil Scherrer of Stanford University. HMI was built by a collaboration of Stanford University and the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif.

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly is a group of four telescopes designed to photograph the sun’s surface and atmosphere. The instrument covers 10 different wavelength bands, or colors, selected to reveal key aspects of solar activity. These types of images will show details never seen before by scientists. The principal investigator is Alan Title of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, which built the instrument.

The Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment measures fluctuations in the sun’s radiant emissions. These emissions have a direct and powerful effect on Earth’s upper atmosphere -- heating it, puffing it up, and breaking apart atoms and molecules. Researchers don’t know how fast the sun can vary at many of these wavelengths, so they expect to make discoveries about flare events. The principal investigator is Tom Woods of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. LASP built the instrument.

"These amazing images, which show our dynamic sun in a new level of detail, are only the beginning of SDO's contribution to our understanding of the sun," said SDO Project Scientist Dean Pesnell of Goddard.

SDO is the first mission of NASA's Living with a Star Program, or LWS, and the crown jewel in a fleet of NASA missions that study our sun and space environment. The goal of LWS is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to address those aspects of the connected sun-Earth system that directly affect our lives and society.