This Epic Time Lapse Video is More Than 100 Images of the Sun Condensed into One Amazing Sight

Something experts are now calling “one of the richest and biggest repositories of solar image data available to mankind."

Transcript

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.