Seeing Spots: NASA Video Shows 7 Years of Solar Activity:

eHam.net News — Watch the sun break out in spots over and over again in a new NASA video of the sun showing seven years of sunspot footage, collected by the agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The SDO launched in December 2009 and has been in space long enough to see most of an 11-year solar cycle, which is characterized by a peak in activity, such as the appearance of sunspots and explosions of material from the surface. The mission is intended to help scientists learn more about the sun’s influence on the Earth by studying the sun’s atmosphere. In 2013, the SDO and other observatories observed the most muted solar peak in 100 years, which is captured in the video. Data in the video is represented up to January 2017. The larger, orange sun on the left side of the screen represents visible light captured by the HMI (Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager). The black dots are sunspots, which are concentrations of magnetic fields that appear darker than the surroundings. Simply put, larger and more frequent sunspots tend to correlate with more solar activity.

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