Witnessing Solar Mysteries: 133 Days on the Sun's Surface

133 Days on the Sun's Surface it was recorded by a NASA spacecraft called the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). SDO has been taking pictures of the Sun for more than 13 years from space. These pictures have helped us learn a lot about how the Sun works and how it affects our solar system.

SDO has three special cameras that take pictures of the Sun very often. One of them, called the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), takes pictures every 12 seconds using different colors of light. In this video, you're seeing images taken in a special kind of light that shows the Sun's outer layer, called the corona.

This video compresses 133 days of Sun-watching into 59 minutes. You can see bright areas moving across the Sun's surface as it turns. The loops you see above the bright areas are magnetic fields holding hot, glowing gas. These bright areas can also cause solar flares, which are like bright flashes when magnetic fields snap together.

Sometimes, the video has dark frames because the Earth or the Moon passed between SDO and the Sun, blocking its view. Other times, it happened because of technical issues.

SDO sends a huge amount of data to Earth every day. Some of the pictures where the Sun isn't in the center were taken when SDO was adjusting its cameras