RELEASE: 00-121

Where can you make auroras dance, create and manipulate electric currents and watch the Sun churn, whirl and explode? At the Maryland Science Center, home for the newest and hottest museum exhibit in the solar system.

Last week, an exciting new traveling exhibit called the "Space Weather Center" began its three-month stay at the Science Center, which is located in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Each weekend during the exhibit, scientists and space weather experts from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will be on hand at the Science Center to conduct science demonstrations for the public and answer questions about the Sun and its affects on our planet.

To the unaided eye, space appears to be a vast, dark void and the Sun a tranquil sphere of light. But in fact, space is not empty. We live in the atmosphere of a very dynamic star. Our solar system has the cosmic equivalent of winds, clouds, storms and hurricanes that scientists call 'space weather.' And just like the weather here on Earth, it can be both mild and wild.

Using current images, movies and science information - as well as several hands-on and minds-on activities - the exhibit explores the nature of the Sun and Earth and the mysterious connections between them. Visitors also will learn how spacecraft allow researchers to "see the invisible" and how weather in space can affect our everyday lives.

Scientists and educators from Goddard and the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., developed the Space Weather Center. An online version of the exhibit can be viewed on the Internet at: http://istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/exhibit/

NOTE TO EDITORS - You can download images from the Space Weather Center from:

Sample movies from the exhibit are available at: