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When you take a picture of the sky,

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you might see this:

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an overexposed, bright, white glare that we know as the Sun.

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In photos, the Sun appears white

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because it emits all the colors we can see at once.

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Our eyes can only see a narrow range of light

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known as the visible spectrum.

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When they combine together, they make white light.  

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But the Sun also emits light that is invisible to the naked eye.

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These are images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO.

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It was launched in 2010

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and has been observing the Sun from space

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in a way that our eyes cannot.

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SDO uses instruments with special filters

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to see the Sun in 10 different wavelengths of light,

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including many that we can’t see with our own eyes.

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For us to see them,

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Scientists convert SDO’s data to colors we can see.

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The different colors correspond to different temperatures and regions on the Sun.

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This allows us to study how the Sun releases material

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that can travel across the solar system

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and affect our technology in space and on Earth.

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These wavelengths show us the Sun’s upper atmospheric layers at different temperatures.

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This wavelength highlights filaments and prominences.

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These wavelengths highlight the corona, the Sun’s atmosphere

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that is much hotter than the Sun’s surface

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and shows features like coronal loops and coronal holes.

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The wavelengths here reveal the Sun’s active regions,

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which have intense magnetic activity that sometimes give rise to eruptions.

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These wavelengths can see the hottest material in a solar flare.

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Being able to see constant movement of material on the Sun and in its atmosphere

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can help scientists better understand how our Sun behaves

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and how to track storms that might affect

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our satellites and astronauts in space or communications on Earth.