Watch the Sun Spin, Flare and Loop

This video is a stunning 4K x 4K view of the Sun’s activity over four months, from August to December 2022. It was taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which has been orbiting Earth and observing the Sun for almost 13 years. SDO’s data has helped us learn a lot about our nearest star and how it affects our solar system. SDO uses three instruments to take pictures of the Sun every fraction of a second. One of them, the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), takes pictures every 12 seconds in 10 different colors of light. This video focuses on one color, the extreme-ultraviolet, which reveals the Sun’s outer layer, the corona. The video is made of images taken every 108 seconds, and it shows 133 days of solar activity in less than an hour. You can see bright spots moving on the Sun’s surface as it spins. The Sun takes about 27 days to complete one rotation. The bright spots are areas where the Sun’s magnetic field is strong and twisted. They trap hot gas called plasma, which forms loops above the surface. These loops can also produce solar flares, which are sudden bursts of light and energy when the magnetic field breaks and reconnects. SDO has been watching the Sun non-stop, but sometimes it misses a few frames. This happens when Earth or the Moon blocks SDO’s view of the Sun, or when there is a problem with the instruments or the data transmission. SDO sends 1.4 terabytes of data to Earth every day. Sometimes, SDO also adjusts its instruments, and that makes the Sun look off-center in some images. SDO is not alone in studying the Sun. NASA has other missions that will keep observing our star in the future. They will help us understand more about our place in space and how to protect our astronauts and spacecraft from the Sun’s effects.