covering the week's top textbooks like
Linux bias you shouldn't stare at the
Sun it's dangerous but this month marks
a full decade of NASA's Solar Dynamics
Observatory doing the staring at the Sun
for us it's been studying the star
closest to Earth non-stop from orbit
gathering 425 million high-resolution
images since June 2010 the data
collected has helped scientists make
many discoveries but for those of us
scrolling the internet for some kind of
good news nASA has turned the
observations into something fun nASA has
compiled the images into a stunning
time-lapse of the stars activity over
the last 10 years the time-lapse
assembles images taken at an extreme
ultraviolet wavelength that shows the
sun's outermost atmospheric layer the
corona the movie compiles a photo every
hour with dark slides caused by the
Earth or the moon eclipsing the
observatory as they pass between the
spacecraft and the Sun the full video
lasts 61 minutes showcasing the sun's
11-year solar cycle with its rise and
fall in activity the shift in solar
activity can be clearly seen as the
number of swelling solar spots increased
to explosive levels with violent whips
of magnetic field lines and solar flares
it then calms down again to a period
known as solar minimum when the amount
of solar activity is relatively low
that's a period we're in now with one
result being that the Northern Lights
are less frequently seen in lower
latitudes it's stunning to see from our
perspective even if a decade is a little
more than a blip in the life of a star
the full time-lapse video in 4k
resolution can be viewed at cat5 dot TV
slash Sun
[Music]