2015 was a Very Good Year

2015 was a great year for SDO! We finished our prime mission and began the first extended mission. Several hundred scientific papers appeared describing SDO data. And we made it onto several "Best Of" lists and magazine covers in 2015! Many of these were for the excellent 5th Year movie showing how the Sun changed over the prime mission. SDO was built to show us how the Sun changes in time and having the movie be a "Best Of" image means we doing just that.

Check out these:

Popular Science

Buzzfeed

IFLScience Top 10 Space Images 2015

My favorite image of 2015 was the transit eclipse on Sept. 13, 2015. Here is an example of what that looked like in AIA 171. The sharp curve on the left is the Moon and the blurry curve at the top is the Earth moving out of the way. It was the first transit eclipse seen by SDO (probably a first for NASA) and the only lunar transit seen by SDO that was also seen as a solar eclipse on the Earth. Check out the movies of the transit eclipse at NASA.

I want to thank and congratulate the great team that works to keep SDO data and science flowing.

Even after almost 6 years in orbit SDO is GO!