NASA releases time-lapse video showing 10 years of the Sun in one hour.

Extract from ABC News

Posted Yesterday, updated Yesterday

NASA's time-lapse video showcases the work of its Solar Dynamics Observatory, which has observed the sun for over 10 years.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-27/nasa-time-lapse-video-showing-10-years-of-our-sun-in-one-hour/12399940

NASA's decade-long mission observing the sun from an orbiting satellite has produced a stunning time-lapse video.

Key points:

• The images were taken using an array of instruments on the Solar Dynamics Observatory
• Every 0.75 seconds images were taken as the SDO orbited earth
• The images in the time-lapse video were taken at 17.1 nanometres

For over 10 years, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has watched the sun, using an array of instruments to take high-resolution images every 0.75 seconds in its orbit around Earth.

In a video released on NASA's website this week, the 10-year time-lapse condensed into 61 minutes shows the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere, called the solar corona, that gives rise to solar wind — the hot, energized, charged particles that stream outward from the sun and fill the solar system.

NASA says the time-lapse images are taken at the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 17.1 nanometres to capture the outer atmosphere.

"The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light," NASA said in a statement.

NASA says the video shows the rise and fall of the solar cycle and other notable events, such as transiting planets and solar eruptions.

"This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system," the statement says.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft studies the solar atmosphere.(Supplied:)

As of June 2020, the SDO spacecraft has been watching the Sun for a full decade — gathering 425 million high-resolution images and amassing 20 million gigabytes of data.

NASA says dark frames in the video were caused by the Earth or Moon eclipsing the observatory as they passed between the spacecraft and the Sun.

While an instrument failure resulted in a longer blackout in 2016.

NASA describes the SDO as a 4.5-metre-high, 2m-wide, sun-pointing, semi-autonomous spacecraft that allows nearly continuous observations of the Sun.

ABC/Reuters