As of June 2020, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory — SDO — has now been watching the Sun non-stop for over a full decade. From its orbit in space around the Earth, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the Sun, amassing 20 million gigabytes of knowledge over the past 10 years. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and the way it influences the system.
6:20 June 7, 2011- A massive prominence eruption explodes from the lower right of the Sun.
12:24 June 5, 2012-- The transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. Won’t happen again until 2117.
13:06 July 19, 2012-- A complex loop of magnetic fields and plasma forms and lasts for hours.
13:50 Aug. 31, 2012-- The most iconic eruption of this solar cycle bursts from the lower left of the Sun.
20:25 Sept. 29, 2013-- A prominence eruption forms a long 'canyon’ that is then covered with loops of plasma.
26:39 Oct. 8, 2014-- Active regions on the Sun resembles a jack o’ lantern just in time for Halloween.
36:18 May 9, 2016-- Mercury transits across the face of the Sun. Smaller and more distant than Venus it is hard to spot.
43:20 July 5, 2017-- A large sunspot group spends two weeks crossing the face of the Sun.
44:20 Sept. 6, 2017-- The most powerful sequence of flares during this solar cycle crackle for several days, peaking at X9.3.
57:38 Nov. 11, 2019-- Mercury transits the Sun once more for SDO. The next transit won’t be until 2032. #NASA #10yearTimelapseOfSun #NASATime-lapse
