SDO: The Solar Dynamics Observatory launched on 2-11-2010 ... to study solar variability ... its impacts on Earth ... by studying the solar atmosphere in many wavelengths simultaneously ... how the Sun's magnetic field is generated and structured ... how it forms solar wind, energetic particles, and variations in the solar irradiance ... how Space Weather comes from that activity. This recurring diary highlights that solar activity.
SDO has continually observed the sun on quiet days and explosive ones. More than 1000 solar outbursts have occurred since SDO sent back its first pictures of the sun in April 2010. This video collection from NASA describes some of the highlights of SDO during its second year of operation. The sun's activity is building toward an expected maximum in 2013. There will be more highlights to come. Stay tuned.
Please join me below for another video from a few days ago compiled from SDO data by a citizen scientist. And, there are links to additional information about SDO.
Citizen Scientists use the images from SDO in their own projects. One such project is on Youtube channel GeeMackVideo. The SDO image data is publicly available soon after being received by the science teams. Images are provided at a rate of about one per channel every 15 minutes. The following video is of recent solar activity from the GeeMackVideo series. |
Just after the video starts, click the icons like the ones below these colored arrows for HD and full screen. |
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The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) generates an enormous amount of data as it monitors the Sun's activity. It is a sun-pointing spacecraft making nearly continuous observations with an almost constant data downlink of 130 Megabits per second. The spacecraft is 4.5 m x 2 m with a mass of 3100 kg. One of the instruments is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA). The AIA link provides detailed specifications of this instrument and examples of the data obtained. |
GeeMack describes how he makes his videos...
It takes around a half hour to download the data for a 12 hour sequence to make a 40 second video. Each frame comes in as a 1M compressed 4096x4096 grayscale image. I figure out the crop and run those images through as a batch cropping program. That might take another half hour. Then I put them in a video program which adds the color, logo overlays, and music, and tweak the start/finish and final crop. That can be five or ten minutes. Then run the result through a converter to make the MP4 finished product, another 5 minutes. And uploading to YouTube might take another 10. Most of it is automated, so I might have 15 or 20 minutes hands-on time. It's often a couple hours from when I start to when I post the link. But in many cases the most recent frame in the video can be only an hour ago in real time.
The solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME) can sometimes be directed at the Earth. Such events can greatly affect Earth's Spaceweather. The Spaceweather link provides information on solar winds, x-ray solar flares, sunspots, aurora forecasts, images of interest, and much more. There is also a searchable archive by date in the upper right. |
The subject of SDO has been thoroughly covered before in an excellent and comprehensive diary series by my friend and colleague in SciTech palantir. |
Tuesday Science Videos Solar Dynamics Observatory
Sunday Science Videos 8 Living With A Star
Sunday Science Videos 9 Solar Dynamics Observatory (Finale) |
Links to additional resources |
Citizen Science projects have been around for a long time.
Seti@Home and the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Zooniverse has projects covering galaxies, the Moon and Sun, extra-solar planets, star formation, Kuiper Belt icy objects, weather logs from old ships, ancient Greece, and whale communication.
Astronomy Picture of the Day
NASA Image of the Day
NASA/JPL News Video Channel
JPL Solar System Simulator
SOHO Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
Solar and Heliospheric Forecasts |
The Sun's activity is on the increase. It is expected that solar flares and CME will become more frequent. I will monitor the
GeeMackVideo channel and post new videos when interesting activity is happening. That might be as often as each week or two. If you want to see more, visit his channel.
Full disclosure: the GeeMackVideo channel owner is my brother-in-law.