The Sun is a constant presence for all life on Earth, bringing light, heat and dividing our day and night. But the sun is more than just a bright light in the sky and a new video from NASA reveals its ever-changing surface in a stunning time span lasting 133 days.
The new Sun video, which NASA released on YouTube Jan. 5, shows the Sun as it appeared over four months in 2022, from Aug. 12 to Dec. 22. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured the video as part of its continuous monitoring. For solar flares and other space weather.
The scientists then compressed the video so much that it would take just 1 hour of your time over the entire 133 days. The video above, created by our Space.com team, reduced the SDO time-lapse even further, squeezing all 133 days of Sun video into just 2 minutes.
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you can see Full 1 Hour Video on YouTube (opens in new tab) From NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center team. SDO observes the Sun by taking a picture every 0.75 seconds with three different instruments.
NASA writes in a video description on YouTube, “This 133-day time-lapse shows images taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme-ultraviolet wavelength that covers the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer: the corona.” shows.” Watch the full video from NASA Goddard (and rock out to music from Lars Leonhard’s “Geometric Shapes” album) below.
In the video, you can see bright, active regions of super-hot plasma on the Sun’s surface as it spins on its axis, making a complete rotation in 27 Earth days.
“The loops extending above the bright regions are magnetic fields trapped in hot, glowing plasma,” NASA wrote. “These bright regions are also the source of solar flares, which appear as bright flashes as magnetic fields snap together in a process called magnetic reconnection.”
You can see some dark moments in the video. They were caused by eclipses of the Earth and Moon as they passed between the SDO spacecraft and the Sun.
“Other blackouts are caused by instrumentation down or data errors. SDO transmits 1.4 terabytes of data to the ground every day,” NASA wrote. “When SDO was calibrating its instruments, the images were viewed where the sun is off-center.”
SDO is one of several space-based observatories that continuously monitor the Sun for signs of potentially dangerous space weather. SDO was launched in February 2010 and has spent nearly 13 years recording live views of the Sun in stunning 4K resolution.
“SDO and other NASA missions will continue to watch our Sun for years to come, provide more information about our place in space, and keep our astronauts and assets safe,” NASA wrote in the video description.
Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow @tariqjmalik (opens in new tab), follow us @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab), Facebook (opens in new tab) And instagram (opens in new tab),