New Delhi: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on Wednesday, February 11, celebrated its fifth anniversary in space.
And to mark the occasion, NASA has released an amazing new video showcasing highlights from the last five years of Sun watching.
Watch the video below:
The video shows “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.”
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, said NASA.
In the description of its YouTube video, NASA said that the captivating imagery allows one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona.
SDO provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day, capturing an image more than once per second.
The observatory has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grew and erupt ever since its launch on February 11, 2010.
