SDO: Year One

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    ID: 11742 Produced Video

    SDO: Year 5

    Feb. 11th, 2015
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    Highlights from the Solar Dynamics Observatory's five years of watching the sun.The music is "Expanding Universe" and "Facing the Unknown" both from Killer Tracks.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.For complete transcript, click here.Information about the individual clips used in this video is here.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO || February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day. Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona. In honor of SDO's fifth anniversary, NASA has released a video showcasing highlights from the last five years of sun watching. Watch the movie to see giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, the dance of giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the sun's surface. The imagery is an example of the kind of data that SDO provides to scientists. By watching the sun in different wavelengths – and therefore different temperatures – scientists can watch how material courses through the corona, which holds clues to what causes eruptions on the sun, what heats the sun's atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move.Five years into its mission, SDO continues to send back tantalizing imagery to incite scientists' curiosity. For example, in late 2014, SDO captured imagery of the largest sun spots seen since 1995 as well as a torrent of intense solar flares. Solar flares are bursts of light, energy and X-rays. They can occur by themselves or can be accompanied by what's called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, in which a giant cloud of solar material erupts off the sun, achieves escape velocity and heads off into space. In this case, the sun produced only flares and no CMEs, which, while not unheard of, is somewhat unusual for flares of that size. Scientists are looking at that data now to see if they can determine what circumstances might have led to flares eruptions alone. Goddard built, operates and manages the SDO spacecraft for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. SDO is the first mission of NASA's Living with a Star Program. The program's goal is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to address those aspects of the sun-Earth system that directly affect our lives and society. ||

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  • 
    ID: 11745 Produced Video

    Solarium - Resource Page

    Feb. 5th, 2015
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    A child looks up at Solarium at the Goddard Visitor Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.Photo Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center || Solarium — a site specific, ultra-HD video installation — puts you directly in the heart of a mesmerizing show. The art taps into a vast reservoir of imagery from a NASA spacecraft, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).SDO watches the Sun in ultratraviolet light that is invisible to the naked eye. SDO takes a picture of the full disc of the Sun almost once a second. Each image has eight times as much resolution as an HD TV. The observatory records the solar images as a binary code, ones and zeros, which computer programs can translate into black-and-white pictures. Video producers can take these thousands of frames and treat them as footage, applying a cinematic tone conveyed through color correction, cropping, and applied camera movements.For b-roll of SDO footage, please see related media at the bottom of this page. ||

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    ID: 11460 Produced Video

    SDO: Year 4

    Feb. 11th, 2014
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    The sun is always changing and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is always watching. Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO keeps a 24-hour eye on the entire disk of the sun, with a prime view of the graceful dance of solar material coursing through the sun's atmosphere, the corona. SDO's fourth year in orbit was no exception: NASA is releasing a movie of some of SDO's best sightings of the year, including massive solar explosions and giant sunspot shows. SDO captures images of the sun in 10 different wavelengths, each of which helps highlight a different temperature of solar material. Different temperatures can, in turn, show specific structures on the sun such as solar flares, which are giant explosions of light and x-rays, or coronal loops, which are streams of solar material traveling up and down looping magnetic field lines. The movie shows examples of both, as well as what's called prominence eruptions, when masses of solar material leap off the sun. The movie also shows a sunspot group on the solar surface. This sunspot, a magnetically strong and complex region appearing in mid-January 2014, was one of the largest in nine years. Scientists study these images to better understand the complex electromagnetic system causing the constant movement on the sun, which can ultimately have an effect closer to Earth, too: Flares and another type of solar explosion called coronal mass ejections can sometimes disrupt technology in space. Moreover, studying our closest star is one way of learning about other stars in the galaxy. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. built, operates, and manages the SDO spacecraft for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.SDO: Year One here.SDO: Year 2 here.SDO: Year 3 here.Information about the individual clips used in this video is here. ||

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