Fascinating images of ten years of solar activity
A NASA video shows what has been happening on the sun over the last ten years. The images captured by the SDO satellite are fascinating.
The SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) has been orbiting the sun for ten years and has captured 425 million images in the process. This resulted in 20 million GB (20 petabytes) of data. NASA shows the ten years in a one-hour time-lapse video. Things are heating up, with many parallel eruptions. Due to the eleven-year sunspot cycle, the overall picture changes over the years. In February 2014, the sunspot maximum, you can see significantly more action than in 2020.
An hour is a long time if you don't want to meditate. No problem: you can find the highlights of the ten years in the description on YouTube. For example, when Venus passes in front of the sun. An extremely rare event that won't happen again until 2117. In the highlights, NASA not only links to the right place in the time-lapse video, but also to a separate video that shows the event longer, bigger and better. Here, for example, is an eruption from 31 August 2012, which was also captured by other satellites.
What is shown in the time-lapse video is not visible light waves, but extreme ultraviolet. This is ultraviolet with very short wavelengths that do not occur naturally on Earth. It can be used to image activities in the outermost atmospheric layer of the sun.
In addition to the extreme ultraviolet, the SDO can capture twelve other wavelength ranges. Each wavelength serves a different purpose and is displayed in a different colour for clarity. This is the reason why the sun is shown in mustard yellow in the video. You can find more information about this on this NASA page.
My interest in IT and writing landed me in tech journalism early on (2000). I want to know how we can use technology without being used. Outside of the office, I’m a keen musician who makes up for lacking talent with excessive enthusiasm.