Solar Flares & Salazar: An Art/Science Collaboration

A coronal mass ejection (CME), if directed at Earth after a period of Solar Flares, would shut down electric communications across the planet. The damage to electric and electronic systems from computers to satellites in the United States alone, is estimated to cost three-trillion dollars. As extensive pollution by humans continues, it causes damage to Earth's Ozone Layer, it's critical to protect Earth from harmful UV radiation. Civilization is more in danger than ever before. Life on Earth is profoundly linked to our Sun. It is the principal energy source that drives photosynthesis, generates weather and climate and our metabolism. Our food, our fuel, our very evolution on this planet depends on our Sun. For these reasons and more, the Sun literally means life. Today, solar observations from space have provided extraordinary images of the sun. Missions like SOHO, STERO and especially DDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory launched in 2010) have vastly deepened our knowledge of our sun. With such extraordinary instruments we've actually learned more about our Sun and its properties in recent decades than our species has in all the previous millions of years we've inhabited the Earth. The Maine Arts Commission awarded Roland Salazar Rose a grant for the production and publication of an e-pub titled Solar Flares & Salazar: An Art/Science Collaboration. The e-pub directs pubic attention to the existential threat now posed to our environment by pollution, and asks everyone to be responsible stewards on "Spaceship Earth." Solar Flare & Salazar provides a Link to the video produced at Emera Astronomy Center. The project team is: Shawn Laatsch, Director of the Emera Astronomy Center UMO, Maine; music, narration and technical support from Duane Shimmel, Director, Center for Innovation and Learning, UMO; script by curator John Ripton PhD, in collaboration with Salazar, a Maine artist. As a responsible steward on "spaceship earth" you can respond to the existential threat to Earth by joining others in taking immediate steps to reduce the carbon footprint we now leave at Earth's door. The e-pub, "Solar Flares & Salazar" with many links to established environmental sites is your environmental guide; it informs and illustrates how our relationship to our Sun, and our place in the universe, makes everyone responsible to address climate change.