WATCH: NASA releases captivating time-lapse Video of 133 Days of the Sun

All life on Earth depends on the sun, which provides heat, and light, and divides the day and night. However, the sun is more than simply a blazing light in the sky, and a brand-new NASA video shows its constantly morphing surface over 133 days.

The new solar video, which NASA posted on YouTube on January 5th, depicts the sun as it appeared over four months, from August 12 to December 22nd, 2022. As part of its ongoing search for solar flares and other space weather, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded the video. The video was then compressed by scientists so that the entire 133 days can be watched in only one hour.

The 133 days of sun videos from the SDO time-lapse were condensed into just 2 minutes of footage in the aforementioned video, which was produced by our Space.com team. The crew from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center uploaded the complete one-hour video to YouTube. SDO takes a photo of the sun every 0.75 seconds while observing it with three different tools. In a YouTube video description, NASA stated that the 133-day time-lapse “displays photographs collected at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme-ultraviolet wavelength and reveals the sun’s outermost atmosphere layer: the corona.”

The sun, which revolves on its axis once every 27 Earth days, is depicted in the video as having brilliant, active patches of extremely hot plasma churning across its surface. According to NASA, magnetic fields that have trapped hot, glowing plasma are responsible for the loops that stretch above the luminous spots. The magnetic reconnection process causes magnetic fields to snap together, resulting in solar flares, which are also produced by these brilliant regions. There may be some ominous scenes in the video. These were brought on by the Earth and moon passing in front of the SDO spacecraft and the sun, causing eclipses.

“Data mistakes or downed instruments are the causes of other blackouts. SDO sends 1.4 terabytes of data to Earth each day “NASTA said. The photos with the sun off-center were noticed by SDO when calibrating its equipment. Several space-based observatories, including SDO, continuously monitor the sun for indications of potentially hazardous space weather.

Since its introduction in February 2010, SDO has captured live views of the sun in breathtaking 4K resolution for almost 13 years. In the years to come, SDO and other NASA missions will continue to observe our sun, offering new knowledge about our location in space and information to keep our astronauts and assets safe, NASA stated in the description of the video.