Five-year sun cycle in pics taken every eight hours is released by NASA

Captivating video has been released by NASA showing some of the most memorable moments of the Sun’s activity in the last five years. Highlights include clouds of solar material being hurled into space and loops hovering in the atmosphere, which is known as the corona. There are also sunspots growing and shrinking on the sun’s surface - and the four minutes of footage has been likened to ballet.

The images that have all the pretty loops and arches are extremely hot material. We would like to understand where all those arches come from. They are filled with things that are about 2 million degrees.

Project scientist for SDO Dean Pesnell said in an interview with Yahoo News

The pictures were taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which captures images more than once per second and has been doing so for five years. In late 2014, SDO photographed imagery of the largest sun spots seen since 1995 as well as a torrent of intense solar flares, which are bursts of light, energy and X-rays. The agency said: “SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on 11 February, 2010.

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