Visualizations by
Tom Bridgman
Released on June 24, 2020
Here we present a continuous run of data from the AIA instrument 171 angstrom filter aboard Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Compiling one photo every hour, the movie condenses a decade of the Sun (June 2, 2010-June 1, 2020) into an almost 49 minute time lapse, where every second corresponds to 30 hours of SDO data.
There's a number of phenomema observed:
Earth eclipses: usually occur in February-March and August-September each year.
Lunar transits: We see the lunar disk block out the Sun
Instrument repointings for calibration purposes
Naturally this movie includes a number of events that have been explored previously:
In October and November 2014, a large helmet streamer is visible extremely high above the solar limb. You can still observe it above the solar limb as it moves across the far-side of the Sun.
At various times the AIA instrument failed to collect data resulting in some large data gaps appearing in this visualization as black frames.