NASA releases mesmerizing 10-year timelapse footage of sun

HOUSTON -- NASA released timelapse footage of the sun over the past 10 years to celebrate its Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which has monitored the sun for over a decade, according to their YouTube account.

“From its orbit in space around Earth, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the sun, amassing 20 million gigabytes of data over the past 10 years,” NASA said.

The information gathered from the constant observation of the sun has enabled many new discoveries and how this life-giving star works, according to NASA.

“The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light,” NASA continued. “This 10-year time lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme ultraviolet wavelength that shows the sun’s outermost atmospheric layer — the corona. Compiling one photo every hour, the movie condenses a decade of the sun into 61 minutes.”

During the timelapse, there are parts where the sun is not visible and these moments are due to the Earth or the moon eclipsing SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the sun.

Here are some notable moments NASA documented in the video:

To watch the full video, visit NASA’s YouTube account.

Storyful contributed to this report.