The SDA mission of NASA was launched in the year 2010 to understand the origin of Sun’s energy. (NASA video screengrab)
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has released a 10-year timelapse of the Sun prepared from the data collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
The SDO, which has been observing the Sun non-stop for more than a decade now, captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds, according to the space agency. “SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the Sun, amassing 20 million gigabytes of data over the past 10 years. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system,” NASA said in a release.
The video shows the rise and fall in activity that occurs as part of the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and notable events, like transiting planets and eruptions.
However, despite the SDO keeping its eye pointed toward the Sun, it did miss a few moments. “The dark frames in the video are caused by Earth or the Moon eclipsing SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the Sun. A longer blackout in 2016 was caused by a temporary issue with the AIA instrument that was successfully resolved after a week. The images where the Sun is off-center were observed when SDO was calibrating its instruments,” the space agency said.
The music in the video has been composed by German musician Lars Leonhard.
The SDO mission of NASA was launched in the year 2010 to understand the origin of Sun’s energy, how the inside of the Sun works, and how energy is stored and released in the Sun’s atmosphere. SDO is the first satellite under the Living with a Star (LWS) program at NASA.