SUN from Michael König on Vimeo.
Rare images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory Spacecraft.
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“Billions of years from now our sun, by then a distended red giant star, will have reduced our Earth to a charred cinder.
But the Voyager record will still be largely intact, in some other remote region of the Milky Way galaxy, preserving a murmur of an ancient civilization that once flourished — perhaps before moving on to greater deeds and other worlds — on the distant planet Earth.
But for now, we are star stuff harvesting sunlight.”
~Carl Sagan
What you are seeing here is something very rare: images of the sun our naked eye can’t see, up close and personal.
The above video is composed of time lapse sequences taken of the sun’s atmosphere as observed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraftbetween 2011 and 2015.
This montage features pictures in extreme ultraviolet channels, mainly using wavelengths of 30.4 nm (50,000 Kelvin) and offering a glance at spicules, solar flares, filaments and an overview of the sun’s atmosphere.
The spacecraft footage was captured and processed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) maintained by the Joint Science Operations Center (Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in collaboration with Stanford University) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Filmed in 4K, we suggest seeing these high definition pictures above on the largest screen you have. Here are the scenes you see in their order of appearance:
1. Long shots of solar activity
2. Boiling solar prominence
3. Close up active regions
4. Launching filament
5. Twisting prominence
6. Close up solar activity
7. Solar prominence
8. Lunar transit
9. Solar prominence dance
10. Solar activity
11. Plasma eruption
12. Coronal rain
13. Close up active regions
14. Trebuchet eruption
15. Solar prominence
16. Venus transit
17. Extreme solar eruption
18. Filament eruption & ’canyon of fire’
19. Erupting solar filament
20. Comet ’lovejoy’ passes sun
21. Earth eclipse and dark prominence
“We all shine on…like the moon and the stars and the sun…we all shine on…come on and on and on…”
~John Lennon
by Skippy Massey
This post originally appeared at the Humboldt Sentinel. Reprinted with permission.