Fifty Days of Continuous Sun from Solar Dynamics Observatory (171A filter)
Visualizations by
Tom Bridgman
Released on August 19, 2022
Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) operates in a geosynchronous orbit around Earth to obtain a continuous view of the Sun. The particular instrument in this visualization records imagery in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum at wavelengths normally absorbed by Earth's atmosphere - so we need to observe them from space.
This movie was generated as a test case for a new movie pipeline for SDO, here's SDO AIA 171A imagery, sampled every two minutes for 50 days (April 12 through June 3, 2014), resulting in 30 minutes of continuous play (at 20 frames per second).
There are a number of missing single missing datasets - mostly calibration and dark-frames. However there are a few larger gaps in the series, documented here:
Frames missing from this data run
start frame
end frame
total missing
Start time (TAI)
End time (TAI)
2766
2770
5
2014-04-15T20:12:00.000
2014-04-15T20:20:00.000
7801
7803
3
2014-04-22T20:02:00.000
2014-04-22T20:06:00.000
7806
7808
3
2014-04-22T20:12:00.000
2014-04-22T20:16:00.000
8317
8401
85
2014-04-23T13:14:00.000
2014-04-23T16:02:00.000
8414
8496
83
2014-04-23T16:28:00.000
2014-04-23T19:12:00.000
12846
12850
5
2014-04-29T20:12:00.000
2014-04-29T20:20:00.000
17881
17883
3
2014-05-06T20:02:00.000
2014-05-06T20:06:00.000
17886
17888
3
2014-05-06T20:12:00.000
2014-05-06T20:16:00.000
22926
22930
5
2014-05-13T20:12:00.000
2014-05-13T20:20:00.000
27961
27963
3
2014-05-20T20:02:00.000
2014-05-20T20:06:00.000
27966
27968
3
2014-05-20T20:12:00.000
2014-05-20T20:16:00.000
30080
30135
56
2014-05-23T18:40:00.000
2014-05-23T20:30:00.000
33006
33010
5
2014-05-27T20:12:00.000
2014-05-27T20:20:00.000
38041
38043
3
2014-06-03T20:02:00.000
2014-06-03T20:06:00.000
38046
38048
3
2014-06-03T20:12:00.000
2014-06-03T20:16:00.000
What is the PSF (Point Spread-Function)?
Many telescopes, especially reflecting telescopes such as the ones used on SDO (Wikipedia), have internal structures that support various optical components. These components can result in incoming light being scattered to other parts of the image. This can appear in the image as a faint haze, brightening dark areas and dimming bright areas. The point-spread function (Wikipedia) is a measure of how light that would normally be received by a single camera pixel, gets scattered onto other pixels. This is often seen as the "spikes" seen in images of bright stars. For SDO, it manifests as a double-X shape centered over a bright flare (see Sun Emits Third Solar Flare in Two Days). The effect of this scattered light can be computed, and removed, by a process called deconvolution (Wikipedia). This is often a very compute-intensive process which can be sped up by using a computers graphics-processing unit (GPU) for the computation.
Visualization Credits
Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.): Lead Visualizer Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC): Lead Producer Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.): Technical Support Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.): Technical Support
Please give credit for this item to: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Short URL to share this page: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4963
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0