NASA’s Mind-Bogglingly Epic Timelapse Charts 10 Years of Our Sun
How about that sun, eh? Big old unit. As we bask in the warmer months, NASA has shared a season-appropriate timelapse video charting Señor Sol’s fiery adventures over the last 10 years. Who needs cinemas when you have this?
The video compiles 10 years of the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s views of the gaseous star. Each second represents a single day, meaning it takes around one hour to travel across time from June 2, 2010, to June 1, 2020. The truly epic footage was compiled of 425 million images, which works out at around 80 being captured per minute. In other words, that is one busy satellite.
“From its orbit in space around Earth, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the Sun, amassing 20 million gigabytes of data over the past 10 years,” explains NASA. “Compiling one photo every hour, the movie condenses a decade of the Sun into 61 minutes. The video shows the rise and fall in activity that occurs as part of the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and notable events, like transiting planets and eruptions.”
Clear your schedule and watch the oddly enchanting footage below.
