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New Videos Highlight NASA SDO's Fifth Anniversary

By Karen C. Fox
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
February 11, 2015

February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory or SDO, which provides incredibly detailed images of the Earth-facing side of the sun 24 hours a day. Capturing an image almost once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona.

In honor of SDO's fifth anniversary, NASA has released two videos showcasing highlights from the last five years of sun watching. The first [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-41gAPmUG0 (next below; embedded; with comments; more/download at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11762 )] is a time lapse of the past five years. Different colors represent different wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, ultraviolet light, and visible light, which in turn correspond to solar material at different temperatures. Additionally SDO returns solar magnetic field data that helps scientists study solar activity.

The second video [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSVv40M2aks (next below; embedded; with comments; more/download at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11742 )] showcases highlights from the last five years. Watch the movie to see giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, the dance of giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the sun's surface.

The imagery in both videos is an example of the kind of data that SDO provides to scientists. By watching the sun in different wavelengths – and therefore different temperatures – scientists can watch how material courses through the corona, which holds clues to what causes eruptions on the sun, what heats the sun's atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move. SDO also measures fluctuations in the sun’s extreme ultraviolet output, which provides the majority of energy for heating Earth’s upper atmosphere.

"There have now been more than 2,000 scientific papers published based on SDO data," said Dean Pesnell, project scientist for SDO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "SDO has also led to wonderful international collaborations, with the data being shared and used all over the world."

Five years into its mission, SDO continues to send back tantalizing imagery to incite scientists' curiosity. For example, in late 2014, SDO captured imagery of the largest sun spots seen since 1995 as well as a torrent of intense solar flares. Solar flares are bursts of light, energy and X-rays. They can occur by themselves or can be accompanied by what's called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, in which a giant cloud of solar material erupts off the sun, achieves escape velocity and heads off into space. In this case, the sun produced only flares and no CMEs, which, while not unheard of, is somewhat unusual for flares of that size. Scientists are looking at that data now to see if they can determine what circumstances might have led to flares eruptions alone.

This mission has touched us on many levels; it evokes a sense of wonder when we see these beautiful images;” said Lika Guhathakurta, SDO program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. “It stokes our curiosity and it connects us personally to the deepest mysteries—from the warmth we feel on our skin when we walk outside on a sunny day to the distant reaches of the cosmos.”

Goddard built, operates and manages the SDO spacecraft for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. SDO is the first mission of NASA's Living with a Star Program. The program's goal is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to address those aspects of the sun-Earth system that directly affect our lives and society.

For more on SDO, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/sdo

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/videos-highlight-sdos-fifth-anniversary/


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NASA's SDO Shows A Little Rain On the Sun

On July 19, 2012, an eruption occurred on the sun that produced a moderately powerful solar flare and a dazzling magnetic display known as coronal rain. Hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms, and outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface. Music: "Thunderbolt" by Lars Leonhard, courtesy of artist.
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFT7ATLQQx8 (as embedded; with comments; more/download at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11168 )]

By Karen C. Fox
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
February 20, 2013

Eruptive events on the sun can be wildly different. Some come just with a solar flare, some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and some with complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun's atmosphere, the corona.

On July 19, 2012, an eruption occurred on the sun that produced all three. A moderately powerful solar flare exploded on the sun's lower right limb, sending out light and radiation. Next came a CME, which shot off to the right out into space. And then, the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays – a phenomenon known as coronal rain.

Over the course of the next day, hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, themselves, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms, which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface.

The footage in this video was collected by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument. SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds, and the movie plays at 30 frames per second, so each second in this video corresponds to six minutes of real time. The video covers 12:30 a.m. EDT to 10:00 p.m. EDT on July 19, 2012.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/news/coronal-rain.html


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NASA | Magnificent Eruption in Full HD

Published on Sep 5, 2012 by NASA Goddard [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAY-SMFNfynqz1bdoaV8BeQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/NASAexplorer , http://www.youtube.com/user/NASAexplorer/videos ]

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled away from the sun at over 900 miles per second. This movie shows the ejection from a variety of viewpoints as captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), and the joint ESA/NASA Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

For more, see:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News090412-filament.html [the last item in the post to which this is a reply; this YouTube, directly from NASA Goddard and of better quality, updating the YouTube included there]

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11095 and
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=3999

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC
On Twitter:
http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrnGi-q6iWc [with comments]


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