Short video showing the solar flare and subsequent prominence eruption and "arcade" of loops.Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDOMusic: "Beautiful Awesome" from Universal Production MusicWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Complete transcript available. || This imagery captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows a solar flare and a subsequent eruption of solar material that occurred over the left limb of the Sun on November 29, 2020. From its foot point over the limb, some of the light and energy was blocked from reaching Earth – a little like seeing light from a lightbulb with the bottom half covered up. Also visible in the imagery is an eruption of solar material that achieved escape velocity and moved out into space as a giant cloud of gas and magnetic fields known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME. A third, but invisible, feature of such eruptive events also blew off the Sun: a swarm of fast-moving solar energetic particles. Such particles are guided by the magnetic fields streaming out from the Sun, which, due to the Sun’s constant rotation, point backwards in a big spiral much the way water comes out of a spinning sprinkler. The solar energetic particles, therefore, emerging as they did from a part of the Sun not yet completely rotated into our view, traveled along that magnetic spiral away from Earth toward the other side of the Sun. While the solar material didn’t head toward Earth, it did pass by some spacecraft: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, NASA’s STEREO and ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter. Equipped to measure magnetic fields and the particles that pass over them, we may be able to study fast-moving solar energetic particles in the observations once they are downloaded. These sun-watching missions are all part of a larger heliophysics fleet that help us understand both what causes such eruptions on the Sun -- as well as how solar activity affects interplanetary space, including near Earth, where they have the potential to affect astronauts and satellites. ||

Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Music Credit: Frosted Lace by Matthew Charles Gilbert DavidsonComplete transcript available. || Starting around approximately 1200 - 1808 UTC (7:00 am - 1:38pm ET) November 11, 2019, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory watched as Mercury move across the Sun. The Solar Dynamics Observatory views the Sun in a variety of wavelengths of light in the extreme ultraviolet. || Composite image of Mercury transit across the Sun, as seen by NASA's Solar Dynamics Oberservatory on Nov. 11, 2019. ||

Short video showing the sequence of M and X flares starting on September 4, 2017 and culminating with an X9.3 flare — the largest of the solar cycle.Music: "Networked" from Killer TracksWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Complete transcript available. || || One minute video showing the two X flares on September 6, 2017. The second was an X9.3 flare — the largest of the solar cycle.Music: "Networked" from Killer TracksComplete transcript available. || Active region 2673 emitted a series of flares in early September, 2017, including:--an M5.5 at 4:33 p.m. EDT on Sept. 4, 2017--an X2.2 at 5:10 a.m. EDT on Sept. 6, 2017--an X9.3 at 8:02 a.m. EDT on Sept. 6, 2017--an M7.3 at 6:15 a.m. EDT on Sept. 7, 2017--an X1.3 at 10:36 a.m. EDT on Sept. 7, 2017--an M8.1 at 3:49 a.m. EDT on Sept. 8, 2017--an X8.2 at 12:47 p.m. EDT on Sept. 10, 2017 NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured images of the events. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. To see how this event may affect Earth, please visit NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, the U.S. government's official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. An X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, etc. The X9.3 flare was the largest flare so far in the current solar cycle, the approximately 11-year-cycle during which the sun’s activity waxes and wanes. The current solar cycle began in December 2008, and is now decreasing in intensity and heading toward solar minimum. This is a phase when such eruptions on the sun are increasingly rare, but history has shown that they can nonetheless be intense. September 10, X8.2 ||

A movie of the Aug 21, 2017 lunar transit as viewed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO.) The Sun appears in visible light, and 171 ångstrom extreme ultraviolet light. The movie shows the Sun moving a bit because SDO has a hard time keeping the Sun centered in the image during a transit, because the Moon blocks so much light. The fine guidance systems on the SDO instruments need to see the whole Sun in order keep the images centered from exposure to exposure. Once the transit was over, the fine guidance systems started back up, once again providing steady images of the Sun.Credit: NASA/SDOWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel. ||

Video depicting the trio of solar flares witnessed by SDO in early April 2017. Music credit: A Waltz into Darkness by Joseph BennieComplete transcript available.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel. || The sun emitted a trio of mid-level solar flares on April 2-3, 2017. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured images of the three events. || Image of M5.3 solar flare on April 2, 2017 as seen by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory in a blend of 131 and 171 angstroms. Credit: NASA/SDO ||

Complete transcript available.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Music: Encompass by Mark Petrie || Around 13 times per century, Mercury passes between Earth and the sun in a rare astronomical event known as a planetary transit. Mercury orbits in a plane that is tilted from Earth’s orbit, moving above or below our line of sight to the sun.The 2016 Mercury transit occurred on May 9th, between about 7:12 a.m. and 2:42 p.m. EDT. The images in this video are from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO. Transits provide a great opportunity to study the way planets and stars move in space– information that has been used throughout the ages to better understand the solar system and which still helps scientists today calibrate their instruments. ||

Complete transcript available.Watch this video on the <a href="https://youtu.be/Ski2JSA-Xh0" target="_blank" >NASA Goddard YouTube channel. || On April 17, 2016, an active region on the sun’s right side released a mid-level solar flare, captured here by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. This solar flare caused moderate radio blackouts, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. Scientists study active regions – which are areas of intense magnetism – to better understand why they sometimes erupt with such flares. This video was captured in several wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, a type of light that is typically invisible to our eyes, but is color-coded in SDO images for easy viewing. ||

The Earth and moon photobomb SDO.Watch this video on the NASAexplorer YouTube channel. || On Sept. 13, 2015, as NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, kept up its constant watch on the sun, its view was photobombed not once, but twice. Just as the moon came into SDO’s field of view on a path to cross the sun, Earth entered the picture, blocking SDO’s view completely. When SDO's orbit finally emerged from behind Earth, the moon was just completing its journey across the sun’s face. Though SDO sees dozens of Earth eclipses and several lunar transits each year, this is the first time ever that the two have coincided. SDO’s orbit usually gives us unobstructed views of the sun, but Earth’s revolution around the sun means that SDO’s orbit passes behind Earth twice each year, for two to three weeks at a time. During these phases, Earth blocks SDO’s view of the sun for anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour once each day. Earth’s outline looks fuzzy, while the moon’s is crystal-clear. This is because—while the planet itself completely blocks the sun's light—Earth’s atmosphere is an incomplete barrier, blocking different amounts of light at different altitudes. However, the moon has no atmosphere, so during the transit we can see the crisp edges of the moon's horizon. ||

Watch this video on the NASAexplorer YouTube channel.0 || NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught this image of an eruption on the side of the sun over June 18, 2015. The eruption ultimately escaped the sun, growing into a substantial coronal mass ejection, or CME — a giant cloud of solar material traveling through space. This imagery is shown in the 304 angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light, a wavelength that highlights material in the low parts of the sun’s atmosphere and that is typically colorized in red. The video clip covers about four hours of the event. ||

No description available.

Heliophysics encompasses science that improves our un­derstanding of fundamental physical processes throughout the solar system, and enables us to understand how the Sun, as the major driver of the energy throughout the solar system, impacts our technological society. The scope of heliophysics is vast, spanning from the Sun’s interior to Earth’s upper atmosphere, throughout interplanetary space, to the edges of the heliosphere, where the solar wind interacts with the local interstellar medium. Heliophysics incorporates studies of the interconnected elements in a single system that produces dynamic space weather and that evolves in response to solar, planetary, and interstellar conditions. ||

The space environment is harsh not only on humans and other living organisms, but instruments also.Damage from solar energetic particles and cosmic rays can slowly degrade performance of an instrument. Fortunately there are ways to characterize and correct for this degradation. The graphics on this page are based on the tutorial AIApy: Modeling Channel Degradation over Time. || A view of AIA 304 shortly after the start of science operations when the instrument was 'like new'. || Plot of the change in instrument sensitivity with time for the AIA instruments on SDO. Note some filters are far more strongly affected than others ||

Ultra High Definition, or 4k, TV has four times as many pixels as a high definition 1080 TV. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Its Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) and Helioseismic Magnetic Imager (HMI) instruments together capture an image almost once a second that is twice again as large as what the ultra high-def screens can display. Such detailed pictures show features on the sun that are as small as 200 miles across, helping researchers observe such things as what causes giant eruptions on the sun known as coronal mass ejections (CME) that can travel toward Earth and interfere with our satellites. ||

100 million images of the sun: The Advanced Imaging Assembly on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured its 100 millionth image of the sun on Jan. 19, 2015. The image shows the glow in the solar atmosphere of gases at about 1.5 million Kelvin. Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL || On Jan. 19, 2015, at 12:49 p.m. EST, an instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured its 100 millionth image of the sun. The instrument is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, or AIA, which gathers uses four telescopes working parallel to gather eight images of the sun – cycling through 10 different wavelengths -- every 12 seconds. Between the AIA and two other instruments on board, the Helioseismic Magnetic Imager and the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment, SDO sends down a whopping 1.5 terabytes of data a day. AIA is responsible for about half of that. Every day it provides 57,600 detailed images of the sun that show the dance of how solar material sways and sometimes erupts in the solar atmosphere, the corona. In the almost five years since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO has provided images of the sun to help scientists better understand how the roiling corona gets to temperatures some 1000 times hotter than the sun's surface, what causes giant eruptions such as solar flares, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move. In honor of the 100 millionth image, Dean Pesnell, SDO's project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and Karel Schrijver, the AIA principal investigator at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, California, chose some of their favorite images produced by SDO so far. ||

Specialized instruments, either in ground-based or space-based telescopes, can observe light far beyond the ranges visible to the naked eye. Different wavelengths convey information about different components of the sun's surface and atmosphere, so scientists use them to paint a full picture of our constantly changing and varying star.Yellow light of 5800 angstroms, for example, generally emanates from material of about 10,000 degrees F (5700 degrees C), which represents the surface of the sun. Extreme ultraviolet light of 94 angstroms, on the other hand, comes from atoms that are about 11 million degrees F (6,300,000 degrees C) and is a good wavelength for looking at solar flares, which can reach such high temperatures. By examining pictures of the sun in a variety of wavelengths &mdash; as is done through such telescopes as NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) — scientists can track how particles and heat move through the sun's atmosphere.We see the visible spectrum of light simply because the sun is made up of a hot gas &mdash; heat produces light just as it does in an incandescent light bulb. But when it comes to the shorter wavelengths, the sun sends out extreme ultraviolet light and x-rays because it is filled with many kinds of atoms, each of which give off light of a certain wavelength when they reach a certain temperature. Not only does the sun contain many different atoms &mdash; helium, hydrogen, iron, for example — but also different kinds of each atom with different electrical charges, known as ions. Each ion can emit light at specific wavelengths when it reaches a particular temperature. Scientists have cataloged which atoms produce which wavelengths since the early 1900s, and the associations are well documented in lists that can take up hundreds of pages.Instruments that produce conventional images of the sun focus exclusively on light around one particular wavelength, sometimes not one that is visible to the naked eye. SDO scientists, for example, chose 10 different wavelengths to observe for its Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument. Each wavelength is largely based on a single, or perhaps two types of ions &mdash; though slightly longer and shorter wavelengths produced by other ions are also invariably part of the picture. Each wavelength was chosen to highlight a particular part of the sun's atmosphere.From the sun's surface on out, the wavelengths SDO observes, measured in angstroms, are: 4500: Showing the sun's surface or photosphere. 1700: Shows surface of the sun, as well as a layer of the sun's atmosphere called the chromosphere, which lies just above the photosphere and is where the temperature begins rising. 1600: Shows a mixture between the upper photosphere and what's called the transition region, a region between the chromosphere and the upper most layer of the sun's atmosphere called the corona. The transition region is where the temperature rapidly rises. 304: This light is emitted from the chromosphere and transition region. 171: This wavelength shows the sun's atmosphere, or corona, when it's quiet. It also shows giant magnetic arcs known as coronal loops. 193: Shows a slightly hotter region of the corona, and also the much hotter material of a solar flare. 211: This wavelength shows hotter, magnetically active regions in the sun's corona. 335: This wavelength also shows hotter, magnetically active regions in the corona. 94: This highlights regions of the corona during a solar flare. 131: The hottest material in a flare. ||

On October 8, 2014, active regions on the sun gave it the appearance of a jack-o'-lantern. This image is a blend of 171 and 193 angstrom light as captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory.Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO || Active regions on the sun combined to look something like a jack-o-lantern’s face on Oct. 8, 2014. The active regions appear brighter because those are areas that emit more light and energy — markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. This image blends together two sets of wavelengths at 171 and 193 angstroms, typically colorized in gold and yellow, to create a particularly Halloween-like appearance. ||

Two or three times a year, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory observes the moon traveling across the sun, blocking its view. While this obscures solar observations for a short while, it offers the chance for an interesting view of the shadow of the moon. The moon’s crisp horizon can be seen up against the sun, since the moon does not have an atmosphere. (At other times of the year, when Earth blocks SDO’s view, the Earth’s horizon looks fuzzy due to its atmosphere.) If one looks closely at such a crisp border, the features of the moon’s topography are visible, as is the case in this image from Oct. 7, 2010. This recently inspired two NASA visualizers to overlay a 3-dimensional model of the moon based on data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter into the shadow of the SDO image. Such a task is fairly tricky, as the visualizers — Scott Wiessinger who typically works with the SDO imagery and Ernie Wright who works with the LRO imagery — had to precisely match up data from the correct time and viewpoint for the two separate instruments. The end result is an awe-inspiring image of the sun and the moon. To start the process, the visualizers took the viewing position and time from the SDO image. This information was dropped into an LRO model that can produce the exact view of the moon from anywhere, at any time, by incorporating 6 billion individual measurements of the moon’s surface height from LRO’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument. The model had to take many factors into consideration, including not only SDO’s distance and viewing angle, but also the moon’s rotation and constant motion. Wright used animation software to wrap the elevation and appearance map around a sphere to simulate the moon. The two images were put together and the overlay was exact. The mountains and valleys on the horizon of the LRO picture fit right into the shadows seen by SDO. In its own way, this served as a kind of calibration of data. It means that the SDO data on its position and time is highly accurate and that the LRO models, too, are able to accurately provide images of what’s happening at any given moment in time. And of course, the whole exercise provides for a beautiful picture. ||

No description available.

Still Image for page || SDO, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, images the entire sun at 4096x4096 resolution in multiple wavelengths every 12 seconds. The selection below represents some of the best options for full-disk slow rotation. The 4k content is available for download as frame sequences, and, in some cases, as ProRes video. These files are large and will take a long time to download.Big Sunspot of 2014The largest sunspot seen so far in this solar cycle produced a number of flares, even a few X-class flares, but only one rather small coronal mass ejection (CME). Here is a view of the sunspot group during the two weeks it took to pass across the solar disk.Filament Eruption Creates 'Canyon of Fire' on the SunA magnetic filament of solar material erupted on the sun in late September, breaking the quiet conditions in a spectacular fashion. The 200,000 mile long filament ripped through the sun's atmosphere, the corona, leaving behind what looks like a canyon of fire. The glowing canyon traces the channel where magnetic fields held the filament aloft before the explosion. These images were captured on Sept. 29-30, 2013.More Solar Excitement-October 2013Solar activity in October 2013 continues with several active regions, particularly on the limb, launching solar material into space.The Active Region Trio: October 2011July 2012: Coronal RainA moderate solar flare was emitted by the sun on July 19, 2012. At 5:58 UTC it peaked at M7.7 on the flare scale. What made this particular event so noteworthy was the associated activity in the sun's corona. For the next day, hot plasma in corona cooled and condensed along the strong magnetic fields of the region that produced the flare. The footage in this video was collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument. SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds so each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time. The video covers 4:30 UTC on July 19th to 2:00 UTC on July 20th, a period of 21 hours and 30 minutes. This is the longest slow sequence in the collection and runs for 3.5 minutes at 30fps.Active Region 1520 from SDOThe sun emitted a large flare on July 12, 2012, but earlier in the week it gave a demonstration of how gorgeous solar activity can be. This movie shows the sun from late July 8 to early July 10 shortly before it unleashed an X-class flare beginning at 12:11 PM EDT on July 12June 2013's 'Busy Sun'June of 2013, near the maximum of solar cycle 24, while not extremely active from a solar flare perspective, presented a range of diverse phenomena. We have a couple of solar 'tornadoes' (the twisted protrusions off the limb of the Sun in upper and lower left quadrants), which we eventually see erupt material into space. There are also a number of coronal loops in active regions which are incredibly stable but still exhibit much fine detail.Solar Prominence Dance-December 31, 2012On the final day of 2012, the sun presented a beautiful twisting prominence that rose high into the corona for about 3 hours. It was most visible in extreme ultraviolet light with a wavelength of 304 angstroms. This wavelength highlights plasma with temperatures of around 50,000 Kelvin. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the event at 4k resolution and a high imaging cadence of one image every 12 seconds. ||

The Trebuchet eruption (upper left) as seen in the SDO AIA 304 angstrom filter. This is probably one of the more popular views of the event.4k source files || These clips are elements from various solar videos produced by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Use them to create your own artistic video with the Sun as its theme.These shots are all 1920x1080, but they originate from imagery collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO.) All of that is 4,096 x 4,096 pixels in size and shows the full solar disk. This source material is linked to in the description of each shot. ||

No description available.

No description available.

These are "First Light" release movies for Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) from April 11, 2010. For more information about SDO, visit the SDO web site @ NASA.gov.

Still Image || 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.Year 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Year 5Year 6Year 7Year 10 ||

Quick link for B-ROLL for Mercury transit interviews.Quick link for AUDIO interview with Dr. Padi Boyd.Quick link for canned interview with Dr. Padi Boyd.Quick link for canned interview with Dr. Alex Young looking off camera. Just in! Mercury begins it's TRANSIT here on Monday, Nov. 11!! Quick link to canned interview in Spanish with NASA Scientst Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla.Click here to watch the Solar Dynamics Observatory's view of the transit. || Watch Mercury Glide Across the Sun on Nov. 11Talk Live with a NASA Scientist During Rare Astronomical Event:   Want to catch a glimpse of Mercury? Don’t look too close, but on November 11, our solar system's smallest planet will appear as a small black dot gliding across the face of the Sun. During this rare astronomical event, called a transit, Mercury’s orbit passes directly between Earth and the Sun, similar to a solar eclipse. These events only occur about 13 times per century! In fact, the next transit won’t take place until 2032. Chat with a NASA scientist between 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. EST on Monday, Nov. 11 to learn more about the safest ways to view Mercury’s journey across the Sun, and how events like this help scientists search for planets orbiting around distant stars. It’s never safe to look directly at the Sun, whether with the naked eye or with a telescope, but NASA will offer stunning, high-definition views of the Mercury transit in near real time, courtesy of the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Mercury will begin crossing onto the Sun at around 7:36 a.m. EST before exiting the solar disk at around 1:04 p.m. EST. suggested questions1. An amazing phenomenon is happening today that won’t happen for another 13 years — Mercury is passing in front of the Sun! What exactly is going on? 2. NASA uses events like this one to find planets around other stars. How does that work?3. We’ve always been told not to look directly at the sun. So how can our viewers see today’s event? 4. What do transits and eclipses teach us about our own solar system? 5. Will humans ever get to see the Earth transit across the sun? 6. Where can we learn more about stars and planets? satellite coordinatesInterview Location: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD HD Satellite Coordinates for G17-K17/Upper:Galaxy 17 Ku-band Xp 17 Slot Upper | 91.0 ° W Longitude | DL 12049.0 MHz | Horizontal Polarity | QPSK/DVB-S | FEC 3/4 | SR 13.235 Mbps | DR 18.2954 MHz | HD 720p | Format MPEG2 | Chroma Level 4:2:0 | Audio Embedded ** Contact michelle.z.handleman@nasa.gov or 301-286-0918 if you have any questions. ||