NASA LATEST DISCOVERY ABOUT SOLAR DYNAMICS OBSERVATORY (SDO)

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has been observing the Sun for over a decade. In June 2020, it had gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the Sun, amassing 20 million gigabytes of data over the past 10 years.
SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) captures a shot of the Sun every 12 seconds in 10 different wavelengths. The images shown in the video “Three Years of Sun in Three Minutes” are based on a wavelength of 171 Angstroms, which is in the extreme ultraviolet range and shows solar material at around 600,000 Kelvin. In this wavelength, it is easy to see the Sun’s 25-day rotation as well as how solar activity has increased over three years2. During the course of the video, the Sun subtly increases and decreases in apparent size. This is because the distance between the SDO spacecraft and the Sun varies over time.
The image is, however, remarkably consistent and stable despite the fact that SDO orbits Earth at 6,876 miles per hour and Earth orbits the Sun at 67,062 miles per hour. Such stability is crucial for scientists, who use SDO to learn more about our closest star. These images have regularly caught solar flares and coronal mass ejections in the act, types of space weather that can send radiation and solar material toward Earth and interfere with satellites in space. SDO’s glimpses into the violent dance on the Sun help scientists understand what causes these giant explosions – with the hopes of someday improving our ability to predict this space weather.
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