As children, we were told not to look (or even look directly at) the sun because it could hurt our eyes. Sure, that makes sense, but it also adds to the mystery of the sun. We know it’s shiny, but what exactly does it look like? Thanks to NASA, you can’t ask yourself more, because they recently launched a 10 year time lapse video of the sun. Here we show you how to see it and what you will see.
What’s in the video?
At this point, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has been constantly observing the sun for more than a decade; specifically since June 2, 2010. So once they reached their 10-year mark on June 1, 2020, the SDO put this time lapse video together with what was happening at our nearest star.
Over the past decade, SDO has collected 425 million high-resolution images of the sun, or one image every 0.75 seconds. This resulted in a photo of the sun every hour. For the time-lapse video, each day was condensed into one second of footage, lasting 61 minutes.
So what exactly are you seeing? According to NASA, “The video shows the rise and fall of activity that occurs as part of the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and notable events such as transiting planets and eruptions.” The video also features custom music, titled “Solar Observer,” composed by musician Lars Leonhard.
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Did you miss something from the video? By NASA:
While SDO has kept an unblinking eye pointed at the Sun, there have been a few moments it missed. The dark frames in the video are caused by Earth or the Moon dwarfing the SDO when passing between the spacecraft and the Sun. A longer power outage in 2016 was caused by a temporary issue with the AIA instrument that was successfully resolved after a week. Images where the Sun is off-center were observed when SDO was calibrating its instruments.
How to look
NASA has made the video available in Youtube, so that anyone can see it from the comfort of their home:
And this time, you don’t need special glasses.
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