A Decade Of Sun

As of June 2020, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has now been watching the Sun non-stop for over a full decade. From its orbit in space around the Earth, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the Sun, amassing 20,000,000 gigabytes of data over the past ten years. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system.

With a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light. This 10-year time (June 2, 2010 to June 1, 2020) lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer 3/4 the corona. Compiling one photo every hour, the movie condenses a decade of the Sun into 61 minutes.

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.

There is a number of phenomema observed:

Earth eclipses: usually occur in February-March and August-September each year.
Lunar transits: We see the lunar disk block out the Sun
Instrument repointings for calibration purposes

Naturally this movie includes a number of events that have been explored previously:

October 7, 2010 - Lunar Transit
February 24, 2011 - Trebuchet eruption
June 7, 2011 - Massive eruption
December 15, 2011 - Comet Lovejoy
June 6, 2012 - Venus Transit 2012 (raw content)
July 19, 2012 - Raining Loops
August 31, 2012 - Magnificent CME
September 29, 2013 - Canyon of Fire
October 23-28, 2013 - Five days of flares and CMEs
April 2, 2014 - Graceful eruption
July 8, 2014 - Firework flare
October 2, 2014 - Mid-level flare and eruption
October 8, 2014 - Pumpkin Sun
October 19-27 2014 - Giant sunspot flares
December 19, 2014 - Holiday Lights
April 21, 2015 - Phoenix Prominence Eruption
June 18, 2015 - Arching Eruption
May 9, 2016 - Mercury transit 2016 (raw content)
July 5, 2017 - Life of Sunspot
September 6, 2017 - September flares (biggest)
November 11, 2019 - Mercury Transit 2019 (raw content)

Interesting Physical Features:

In October and November 2014, a large helmet streamer is visible extremely high above the solar limb. You can still observe it above the solar limb as it moves across the far-side of the Sun.

While SDO has kept an unblinking eye pointed towards the Sun, there have been a few moments it missed due to various times the AIA instrument failed to collect data resulting in some large data gaps appearing in this visualization as black frames. Most of the dark frames are caused by Earth or the Moon eclipsing SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the Sun.

April 1, 2015 - about 8 hours
May 13, 2015 - about 6 hours
December 26, 2015 - about 27 hours
August 2, 2016 - about 8 days (temporary issue with the AIA instrument)
April 30, 2017 - about a day
June 28, 2018 - about 18 hours

A Decade Of Sun In 54 Seconds

A condensed time-lapse of the ten years (June 2, 2010 to June 1, 2020) of SDO's solar observation are squeezed into 54 seconds.

SDO and other NASA missions will continue to watch our Sun in the years to come, providing further insights about our place in space and information to keep our astronauts and assets safe.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO Video Production - June 24, 2020
Credits:
Scott Wiessinger (USRA) - Lead Producer
Tom Bridgman (GST) - Lead Data Visualizer
Mara Johnson-Groh (Wyle Information Systems) - Lead Science Writer
Robert C. Garner (USRA) - Project Support

Edit by USA Patriotism! (Music added in A Decade Of Sun - 54 Seconds version.)