It’s hard to imagine what 20 million gigabytes of data is like, and it’s even harder to imagine it as a decade of photos of the sun.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) took 425 million high-resolution images of the star over a 10-year period. The project resulted in countless discoveries regarding the star we orbit and how it influences our solar system.
Using various tools, NASA captured a photo every 0.75 seconds during the decade. One of the instruments used was an Atmospheric Image Assembly (AIA) tool that can capture images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light.
SDO selected an hourly image and compiled it into a 61-minute video. The selected photos were taken with the AIA at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers. This extreme ultraviolet wavelength makes the sun’s corona, or its outermost atmospheric layer, visible.
While seen primarily as a spinning, neon yellow, CGI orb, what the video really reveals is the rise and fall of activity that occurs during the sun’s solar cycle. The 11-year cycle includes events such as planetary transits and eruptions.
NASA provided a list of timestamps that indicate these ephemeral moments. For example, at the 12:24 mark, taken on June 5, 2012, Venus transits the face of the Sun. An event that will not happen again until 2117.
You will also notice that some of the frames darken, these frames signify eclipses of the Earth and the moon. However, there is a longer power outage of 2016 caused by a malfunction with the AIA instrument.
SDO and other NASA teams will continue to observe the sun for years to come. The information collected is used to keep astronauts and assets in space safe.
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The NASA publication releases a spectacular time-lapse video of the 10-year-old sun that first appeared in In The Know.
