The fascinating NASA video captures decades of the sun’s spitting fury

Undo what you are doing. Grab a hot drink, put your feet up and play NASA’s breathtaking video of our moody sun and what it has been up to over the past two decades.

December 2 is the 25th anniversary of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency. To celebrate, the agencies released a nearly 50-minute dramatic video showing the sun exploding solar material from 1998 to 2020.

The SOHO spacecraft is constantly staring at the sun, recording its every whim. It is spectacular and fascinating.

“What becomes clear when the sun turns and the years go by and the stars in the background swirl is how constant the flow of material is being blown up in all directions: the solar wind,” ESA said in a statement. Wednesday. “This constant wind is only interrupted by huge explosions that hurl arcs of material at enormous speeds, filling the solar system with ionized material and solar radiation.”

SOHO showcases special telescopes (coronographs) that block the face of the sun and capture views of coronal mass ejections. CMEs are wild bursts of solar particles which can impact spacecraft, astronauts and even disrupt power grids on Earth.

NASA used the coronograph views for the anniversary video. Occasional bursts of extreme white noise indicate when solar particles are bombarding SOHO. The fast moving bright spots with lines radiating to the sides are photobombing planets.

SOHO’s long life has given researchers a mine of sun data to work with. “Twenty-five years should be just the beginning,” said NASA’s Jack Ireland. “From a scientific point of view, we have to move forward. We can’t take our eyes off the sun.”