PUNCH Outreach Celebrates First “In-Person” Team Meeting in New Mexico
The team of STEM professionals carrying out the outreach program for the PUNCH mission convened its first, in-person Annual Retreat of ~30 core team members, collaborators, advisors, and other partners during the last week of September 2022. The COVID pandemic had prevented the PUNCH outreach team from meeting in person last year after NASA approved our mission-embedded outreach proposal in January 2021. This year’s gathering joined diverse collaborators who had been working together remotely on PUNCH Outreach since the Spring of 2020.
Our retreat themes included team building, planning, and professional development in both heliophysics and cross-cultural collaboration. PUNCH Outreach partners at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (NMMNHS in Albuquerque, NM) served as our generous hosts for the first half of our 4.5-day gathering. Following an educational site visit to the Albuquerque-based Indian Pueblo Cultural Center on Day 3, most of the Retreat participants continued onward to Chaco Canyon.
PUNCH Outreach team members experienced sunrise at Casa Rinconada, the largest excavated Great Kiva in the Chaco Canyon region (60-ft diameter). We used solar viewing filters and explored how to “feel” and locate the Sun using our hands and skin in solidarity with our Blind and Low-Vision advisor. The photo shows our shadows being cast on the west wall of the Kiva shortly after sunrise.
The precise alignment of this 1000-year-old Great Kiva (Casa Rinconada) to the cardinal directions is just one of the many architectural and artistic manifestations of Ancestral Puebloan people that communicates their Sun-watching mastery through time.
Chaco is a remote World Heritage site and one of the best places on the planet to experience some of the worldwide evidence for ancient Sun-watching. To enhance the personal and cultural relevance of NASA Heliophysics for a broader diversity of people, PUNCH Outreach represents NASA missions like PUNCH and Parker Solar Probe as natural extensions of humanity’s long-lived dedication to observing and understanding the rhythms and mysteries of our Sun.
Retreat participants who visited Chaco were able to view the unique petroglyph that may be an Ancestral Puebloan representation of a stormy solar atmosphere during the 1097 solar eclipse which occurred at a time of high solar activity.
Three PUNCH scientists contributed their time and expertise to the Outreach retreat. These include PI Craig DeForest, NASA Mission Scientist Nicki Viall, and NASA Program Scientist Lika Guhathakurta. Denise Hill, the Communications & Outreach lead for the NASA Heliophysics Division also participated in our retreat, helping to invent the valuable tagline: Our Extraordinary Ordinary Star.
PUNCH Scientist, Nicki Viall is trying out our 3-Hole PUNCH Pinhole Projector during the “Mock Outreach Event” we conducted as part of our retreat. The projector allows users to delight in seeing how even square- and triangle-shaped holes make round images of the Sun. She will help to test this and other PUNCH Outreach products with her daughter’s Girl Scout troop. Let us know if you want to include these in your outreach efforts.
NOTE: The version of the projector shown is NOT THE FINAL VERSION. We anticipate the release of a second prototype of this product at AGU 2022.
After the meeting Dr. Viall reported: “There are important things we learned from one another by meeting in person that would have taken a long time (if ever) to understand fully while working remotely. I care a lot about our mission’s outreach efforts, and it was definitely worth it to make this deeper dive with our outreach team.”
PUNCH PI Craig DeForest is "seeing with his hands" by exploring blindly one of our thermoform tactile images representing the Sun's corona. His task is to choose which of six possible images he is experiencing inside the box before him. Our solar tactile images are being developed in collaboration with and for Blind and Low-Vision learners yet can also be adapted to make events more multi-sensory and cross-cultural for sighted learners.
The PUNCH outreach team has continued to analyze and learn from the rich collection of feedback and ideas recorded at our Annual Retreat. Our gathering helped us to test prototype products and continue to learn from scientists, Girl Scout STEM leaders, Blind & Low Vision learners, the descendants of Ancestral Puebloan people, and other collaborators how to be of greater benefit to ALL people with our developing suite of multi-sensory, multicultural, and arts-integrated outreach products.
For more information contact the PUNCH Outreach Director: Dr. Cherilynn Morrow or visit PUNCH Outreach Overview.
Posted on 2022-11-03
