February 11th, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day. Over the last 5 years, the SDO captured more than 200 million images and over 2,600 Terabytes of data. Just to put things into perspective, that’s more than one image every second for 5 years. [Insert random joke about a star being surrounded by the paparazzi 24/7]
But why? Because by watching the sun in different wavelengths, and therefore different temperatures, scientists can observe how material traverses through the corona and thereby understand what really causes eruptions on the surface of the sun.
Even if you’re not interested in all this space related mumbo-jumbo, this video will still manage to mesmerize you.
Check it out.