SDO Sun This Week

  • Released Thursday, November 20, 2025
  • Last updated Thursday, November 20, 2025 at 5:25 PM EST
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The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, orbits Earth in a geosynchronous path, providing a continuous view of the Sun. The instrument shown in this visualization observes ultraviolet light that is normally absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, which is why these observations must be made from space.

These visualizations use the 171-angstrom filter of SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, or AIA. This wavelength is particularly useful for studying the quiet corona and magnetic structures like coronal loops. You may also notice plasma eruptions, some of which are coronal mass ejections that can influence space weather. Bright flashes with X-shaped diffraction spikes are solar flares. Occasionally, a dark circle may cross the Sun’s face — an eclipse caused by Earth or the Moon.

This near-real-time visualization is updated daily.

Sun This Week

This visualization shows SDO imagery from the past 7 days with a color table and image processing applied.

Two archive folders are provided in the Download menu. One stores the week-long videos published each day during the past week, and the other stores all videos published on Fridays since the intialization of this webpage.

Sun Today

This visualization shows SDO imagery from the past 24 hours with a color table and image processing applied.

One archive folder is provided in the Download menu. It stores the 24-hour videos published each day during the past week.

Credits

Missions

This page is related to the following missions:

Datasets used

Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.

This page was originally published on Thursday, November 20, 2025.
This page was last updated on Thursday, November 20, 2025 at 5:25 PM EST.