Image: NASA's SDO performs calibration maneuvers
Friday, November 4, 2016 - 07:01
in Astronomy & Space
On Oct. 19, 2016, operators instructed NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, to look up and down and then side to side over the course of six hours, as if tracing a great plus sign in space. During this time, SDO produced some unusual data. Taken every 12 seconds, SDO images show the sun dodging in and out of the frame. SDO captured these images in extreme ultraviolet light, a type of light that is invisible to our eyes. Here, they are colorized in red.