133 days of Sun in an hour: NASA shows interesting video

January 11, 2023  21:28

In a new video published by the Goddard Space Flight Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States, 133 days of the life of the Sun have been presented.

Huge loops of plasma winding along the star's magnetic field lines, flares accompanied by plasma ejections – all of this happens continuously on the Sun, and we can observe these phenomena thanks to images obtained with the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) camera in the extreme ultraviolet range at intervals of 108 seconds. Tens of thousands of such images have been compiled into a clip lasting nearly an hour.

The sun makes a complete revolution on its axis in 27 days, and several complete revolutions can be seen in this video.

SDO was launched into space in 2010. The observatory sits in geostationary orbit 22,000 kilometers from Earth's surface and records the changes that occur on the Sun's surface, as well as studying its interior, the magnetic field and the hot plasma in the solar corona.

SDO takes about 70,000 images of the Sun each day, and the total amount of data it collects is about 1.5 TB.

SDO's main mission ended in 2015. However, NASA, after evaluating the observatory's usefulness for studying the Sun, has extended its lifespan to 2030.


 
 
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