Watch Three Years of Solar Activity in Three Minutes
The Solar Dynamics Observatory has been in the sky for three years - here's everything it has ever given us.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) went up in early 2010, with a mission of furthering our ability to monitor and understand the sun. Ever since, it has been streaming back important science - and notifying us of solar weather events, like plasma rain on the surface of the sun [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122317-Video-Shows-Plasma-Rain-on-the-Surface-of-the-Sun], for example. To celebrate three years of the SDO's flight, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has released a fantastic video that compiles three years of solar activity into three minutes. What's most interesting is that the sun is nearing the peak of its 11 year cycle - the solar maximum - so these three minutes are three minutes of the sun becoming more and more active. The video has two images a day for all three years.
The SDO's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly takes a picture of the sun every 12 seconds. The images in the video are at a wavelength of 171 Angstroms - that shows us solar material at about 600,000 Kelvin. There are some brief moments of interruption in the images, which are a couple partial eclipses of the sun by the moon, two times the spacecraft rolled, a massive solar flare, the comet Lovejoy, and the transit of Venus. By the way, NASA wants you to know how stable that image is for a spacecraft orbiting the earth at 6,786 miles per hour while the earth is orbiting the sun at 67,062 miles per hour. Just saying.
If that wasn't enough science - and trust us, we understand that - then check out the Geekend Update, our weekly science show.
[video=7160]
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The Solar Dynamics Observatory has been in the sky for three years - here's everything it has ever given us.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) went up in early 2010, with a mission of furthering our ability to monitor and understand the sun. Ever since, it has been streaming back important science - and notifying us of solar weather events, like plasma rain on the surface of the sun [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122317-Video-Shows-Plasma-Rain-on-the-Surface-of-the-Sun], for example. To celebrate three years of the SDO's flight, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has released a fantastic video that compiles three years of solar activity into three minutes. What's most interesting is that the sun is nearing the peak of its 11 year cycle - the solar maximum - so these three minutes are three minutes of the sun becoming more and more active. The video has two images a day for all three years.
The SDO's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly takes a picture of the sun every 12 seconds. The images in the video are at a wavelength of 171 Angstroms - that shows us solar material at about 600,000 Kelvin. There are some brief moments of interruption in the images, which are a couple partial eclipses of the sun by the moon, two times the spacecraft rolled, a massive solar flare, the comet Lovejoy, and the transit of Venus. By the way, NASA wants you to know how stable that image is for a spacecraft orbiting the earth at 6,786 miles per hour while the earth is orbiting the sun at 67,062 miles per hour. Just saying.
If that wasn't enough science - and trust us, we understand that - then check out the Geekend Update, our weekly science show.
[video=7160]
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