NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has shared an amazing time lapse of the Sun that was filmed over the course of ten years! What you are about to see are 425 million high-resolution images that have been collected from more than a decade of observation from their orbit in space.
With a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument only captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light. This 10-year time span shows photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme ultraviolet wavelength showing the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer – the corona. Compiling one photo every hour, the film condenses a decade of the Sun into 61 minutes. 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 personalized music, titled “Solar Observer”, was composed by musician Lars Leonhard (https://www.lars-leonhard.de/).
The video is over an hour long. I know some of you may not sit and look at it for that long, but if you do, you will see some big sun flares and sunspots. Around the 12:23 mark, you can see Venus traveling in front of the sun. I love these things and you will love it too.
