Categories: Missionssun

A Mesmerizing Look at Year 4 of the Solar Dynamics Observatory

Coronal Mass Ejection as viewed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 7, 2011. A similar type of outburst triggered aurorae during a strong geomagnetic storm in February 1872. Image Credit: NASA/SDO

Four years ago today, the Solar Dynamics Observatory embarked on a five-year mission to boldly go where no Sun-observing satellite has gone before. SDO uses its three instruments to look constantly at the Sun in ten different wavelengths. Called the “Crown Jewel” of NASA’s fleet of solar observatories, SDO is a technologically advanced spacecraft that takes images of the sun every 0.75 seconds. Each day it sends back about 1.5 terabytes of data to Earth — the equivalent of about 380 full-length movies.

SDO launched on Feb. 11, 2010, and it has since captured the amazing views of the ever-changing face of the Sun — the graceful dance of solar material coursing through the Sun’s the corona, massive solar explosions and giant sunspot shows. Enjoy this latest highlight video from year 4 from SDO!

I was priveldged to be able to attend the launch of SDO, and you can read our article about the launch here.

The launch included a little “special effects” that wowed the crowd. The Atlas rocket soared close to a sundog just as the spacecraft reached Max-Q, and a ripple effect was created around the spacecraft. You can watch the launch below to see what happened:

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/