Something experts are now calling “one of the richest and biggest repositories of solar image data available to mankind.
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00:00This video was captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which was launched way
00:08back in 2010.
00:10After finishing its initial five-year mission, NASA is now having a little fun with the spacecraft,
00:14and after aiming it at the sun for 133 days, they've now released this, perhaps the longest
00:19time-lapse video ever recorded of our solar system center, condensing that 133 days into
00:25just one hour of video.
00:27NASA took a photo of the sun once every 108 seconds during that time, then stitching it
00:31all together to make this.
00:33If you're doing the math, that means the observatory captured some 70,000 images.
00:37But it wasn't just taking pretty pictures.
00:39The SDO was also looking deeper and gathering data from inside the sun, looking at its magnetic
00:44field, and capturing moments of massive explosions of plasma in the sun's corona, which is something
00:48we need to understand.
00:49As a researcher studying the sun with the Solar Observatory wrote about it, quote, SDO
00:54will determine how the sun's magnetic field is generated, structured, and converted into
00:58violent solar events that cause space weather, something us Earthlings need to be ready for.