9 Jan. () –
NASA has released a video which collects solar activity from August 12 to December 22, 2022, captured by the SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) satellite.
From its orbit in space around the Earth, SDO has been imaging the Sun in 4K x 4K resolution for nearly 13 years. This information has allowed countless discoveries to be made about the functioning of our nearest star and its influence on the solar system, as reported by NASA.
Using a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. Only the AIA (Atmospheric Imaging Assembly) instrument captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths. This 133-day span shows photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, an extreme ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer: the corona. Compiling images taken 108 seconds apart, the film condenses 133 days, or about four months, of solar observations into 59 minutes.
The video shows bright active regions streaking across the face of the Sun as it rotates. The Sun rotates approximately once every 27 days. The loops that extend above the bright regions are magnetic fields that have trapped hot, glowing plasma. These bright regions are also the source of solar flares, that appear as bright flashes when magnetic fields come together in a process called magnetic reconnection.
Although SDO has kept an unblinking eye on the Sun, there have been a few moments that have eluded it. Some of the dark frames in the video are due to the Earth or Moon they eclipse SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the Sun.
Other blackouts are due to instrument failure or data errors. SDO transmits 1.4 terabytes of data to the ground daily. Images in which the Sun appears off-center they were observed when SDO was calibrating its instruments.
