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 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. While SDO has kept an unblinking eye pointed towards the Sun, there have been a few moments it missed. 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. 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. Some noteworthy events appear briefly in this time lapse. Use the time links below to jump to each event, or follow the links to more detailed views. 6:20 June 7, 2011-- A massive prominence eruption explodes from the lower right of the Sun. See the video: 12:24 June 5, 2012-- The transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. Won’t happen again until 2117. See the video: 13:06 July 19, 2012-- A complex...