Incredible Images of our Amazing Star: 5 Years & 2,600 Terabytes

By Ben • science, space • 17 Feb 2015

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is celebrating its fifth year of continuously observing the Sun. The SDO can take 10 high resolution images of the Sun each in a different wavelength every 12 seconds, giving an unprecedented view of our active Sun.

It's easy to think of our closest star as a steady, stable, unchanging fixture- rising, setting, ever present, always providing warmth and light. In reality the surface of the Sun is a tangled mess of complicated magnetic field lines continuously changing and interacting with charged particles and plasma.

Despite being primarily an instrument to collect data for hard science, the SDO shows us the foreign beauty of the surface and corona of the Sun.

The Goddard Media Studios put together this fantastic video celebrating the 5th year anniversary of the SDO, highlighting some of the more beautiful and impressive moments:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GSVv40M2aks%26amp

The table below describes the various events highlighted in the video and gives the wavelength of the footage:

SDO 5 Year Footage List

Source: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO

 

 

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