Four Days of Solar Dynamics in 16 Minutes

The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is a satellite that orbits Earth and always looks directly at the Sun. It observes the Sun in many wavelengths, which are all helpful in studying different aspects of solar science. In this 16-minute video, we watch the Sun evolve from midnight of February 1, 2026, all the way through 11:59 p.m. on February 4. These four days fell during a period called solar maximum, the high point of an approximately 11-year solar cycle when plasma and magnetism on the surface of the Sun is most active. Many so-called "active regions" show up as bright hotspots on the disk of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light, as captured here, and are less common during other parts of the solar cycle. During the time period covered in this video there were five X-class solar flares visible from Earth, which are the highest energy flares. They can be identified in the video as flashes accompanied by vertical stripes (caused by camera saturation). The video also features two eclipses, when Earth passes between SDO and the Sun. Occasional data loss also shows up as blocky black shapes.

Each frame of the animation represents 12 seconds of real time, which is the finest temporal resolution captured by SDO. The high-frequency data and large image resolution of this video makes it well-suited to large screens.