NASA released a video of just over an hour last June representing the full activity cycle of the sun, reports The Guardian . We owe these images to the Observatory of Solar Dynamics (SDO) of the American agency which has been collecting data since June 2010. They allow us to have an overview of the activity of the luminous body.
A catalog of 425 million images
To form this 61-minute time lapse, NASA drew from the catalog of 425 million high-resolution images taken by the SDO, collecting some 20 million gigabytes of data in the process. Why ten years? Because it is approximately the duration of a solar cycle. NASA researchers focused on observing the "north and south poles of the star" which reverse at the end of this period.
These ten years of observation allow us to see many sunspots, as well as eruptions, and even the path of the planets of our system passing in front of the sun, points out The Guardian . Each second represents images taken over a day. NASA asked German Lars Leonhard to compose the music for this video.
SDO research on the sun will continue until 2030.
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