The sun is a continuing presence for all life on Earth, bringing mild, heat and splitting our days and nights. However the sun is greater than only a vibrant mild within the sky and a brand new NASA video reveals its ever-changing floor in a surprising time-lapse that spans 133 days.
The brand new sun video, which NASA launched on YouTube Jan. 5, exhibits the sun because it appeared over 4 months from Aug. 12 to Dec. 22 in 2022. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured the video as a part of its fixed look ahead to solar flares and different space weather.
Scientists then compressed the video so that every one 133 days of it take up simply 1 hour of your time. The video above, created by our House.com group, compressed the SDO time-lapse even additional, squeezing all 133 days of sun movies into simply 2 minutes.
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You’ll be able to see the full 1-hour video on YouTube (opens in new tab) from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center group. SDO observes the sun with three totally different devices, taking an image each 0.75 seconds.
“This 133-day time lapse showcases pictures taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme-ultraviolet wavelength that exhibits the sun’s outermost atmospheric layer: the corona,” NASA wrote in a video description on YouTube. Try the complete video from NASA Goddard under (and rock out to the music of Lars Leonhard’s “Geometric Shapes” album).
Within the video, you may see vibrant, energetic areas of super-hot plasma roiling throughout the floor of the sun because it rotates on its axis, making one full spin ever 27 Earth days.
“The loops extending above the intense areas are magnetic fields which have trapped scorching, glowing plasma,” NASA wrote. “These vibrant areas are additionally the supply of solar flares, which seem as vibrant flashes as magnetic fields snap collectively in a course of known as magnetic reconnection.”
You would possibly see some darkish moments within the video. These had been attributable to eclipses of the Earth and moon as they handed between the SDO spacecraft and the sun.
“Different blackouts are attributable to instrumentation being down or knowledge errors. SDO transmits 1.4 terabytes of knowledge to the bottom each day,” NASA wrote. “The photographs the place the sun is off-center had been noticed when SDO was calibrating its devices.”
SDO is one among a number of space-based observatories preserving fixed watch on the sun for indicators of doubtless harmful space climate. SDO launched in February 2010 and has spent almost 13 years recording stay views of the sun in gorgeous 4K decision.
“SDO and different NASA missions will proceed to look at our sun within the years to come back, offering additional insights about our place in space and data to maintain our astronauts and belongings protected,” NASA wrote within the video description.
E-mail Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or comply with him @tariqjmalik (opens in new tab). Comply with us @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab), Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram (opens in new tab).
