Happy 11th Birthday to SDO

SDO was launched 11 years ago on February 11, 2010. It was a beautiful launch into mostly clear skies over the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SDO has watched almost all of Solar Cycle 24, and now the beginning of Solar Cycle 25. Scientists have used SDO data to publish over 5000 papers on how the Sun works, emphasizing the creation and destruction of the solar magnetic field. Here's a movie of the Sun in AIA's 193 Å passband on February 11, 2021, showing a large filament (dark line in the southern hemisphere) just outside of a dark coronal hole. There's a bright region to the left of the filament that sits over a magnetic field concentration that never formed a sunspot. It looks like Solar Cycle 25 will be as much fun as SC 24!

Why Look at the Sun from Space?

SDO is one of fleet of satellites watching the Sun and recording the data that we use to study the solar magnetic field. The Sun was one of the first objects observed from above the Earth's atmosphere. One reason is the Sun's brightness — it was easy to see in the cameras. A more important reason was the ability to see wavelengths of light that are absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere. Although these wavelengths of light produce the ozone layer, which absorbs another wavelength, and the ionosphere, they are very useful to solar scientists. For example, the total solar irradiance measurements described in a previous post can only be made from a satellite.

What other satellites can you use to study the Sun?

Here are two sources (from many I could list) that can tell you about solar satellites from the dawn of space flight to today.

The first is Solar Satellites by Drs. Brian Dennis and Ryan Milligan. It is a web article on Scholarpedia with a list of 86 solar research satellites starting with the SOLRAD series that had its first launch in 1960. Dennis and Milligan also describe the instruments and observations on more modern satellites.

Another source is Watching the Sun from Space, which is available as a free download from the linked AJP website. This article starts with Skylab and traces the ways we observe the Sun from space. Links are provided for 27 solar missions, with data available for about 21. It also describes some orbits we haven't yet used to observe the Sun but could in the future.

Since the dawn of the Space Age during the decline of Solar Cycle 19, data from solar missions have been crucial in helping us understand the solar magnetic field and solar activity. Solar observatories in space continue to provide useful solar data and will as long as they keep flying and observing the Sun.

SDO should be around to watch Solar Cycle 25.

Happy Launch-versary SDO!

Seven years ago Saturday the Solar Dynamics Observatory rose into the Florida skies atop an Atlas V rocket. It was a spectacular sight that put a spectacular mission into orbit. To celebrate, here are some pictures of the models in my office with a solar spectrum lighting them up. (A prism in the window creates the spectrum. It's fun to watch people's reactions when it is displayed on the wall across the hall.)

On the left is the booster model and the right is a little display model of SDO. You can see more of the spectrum around the shadow of the nosecone. I think the rainbow looks pretty good on them. Reminds me of the sundog we saw during launch all those years ago.

SDO has helped to create over 2600 scientific papers since we began producing science data in May 2010. We are very happy that many young scientists are able to “cut their research teeth” in one of the 49 PhD dissertations that have been written using SDO data and science. People keep using helioviewer to look through the images and make movies.

Thanks for using our data. Many thanks to the science teams that keep SDO running.

Happy Launch-versary SDO!

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!

EVE Cruciform Tomorrow; An SDO Cover Story

Tomorrow, July 1, 2015, SDO will perform an EVE cruciform calibration material. From 1800-2230 UTC (2:00-6:30 p.m. ET), SDO will look to and fro and up and down to allow EVE scientists to track the aging of their instrument.

Here is a collection of magazines and books that have used an SDO image as part of their cover art. There are 34 covers, and another due to come out this week! Three covers do not include an SDO image. The SDO Science Definition Team report is the beginning of the SDO mission and features SOHO artwork. The SDO Book in Solar Physics has a picture of the spacecraft on the cover. But the most intriguing is the book "Twenty-Five Astronomical Observations that Changed the World," a volume in the Patrick Moore Series on Practical Astronomy. It has a picture of Saturn, Titan, and Epimetheus on the cover. Inside it says that the EUV observations of comets near the Sun by AIA is one of the 25 observations that changed the world. That honor earned the cover a spot on the SDO Covers!

SDO is Featured on the BBC Website

SDO images are featured in a slideshow on the BBC website In Pictures: Raw Power of the Sun. Check and see if favorites are there.

SDO Featured on the IEEE Spectrum, 2.12

Check out whose on the cover of IEEE Spectrum 2.12! The story is on solar storms affecting the power grid. Space weather is becoming more interesting as we approach the maximum of Solar Cycle 24.

We are approaching the 2nd anniversary of SDO's launch on February 11, 2010. The satellite is still working great!

An Uneventful Week

After AR 11402 left loose with several large flares and produced proton fluxes not seen since 2005. the Sun flatlined this past week. There are still cool things to look at, like when is the southern hemisphere going to catch up with the northern.

SDO images and scientists will be featured in NOVA's The Secrets of the Sun, coming to a Public TV station near you on April 25, 2012. Check out the PBS Homepage for more details.

SDO Articles in Solar Physics

Articles describing SDO, the science investigations, and science data products are now available in Solar Physics. An overview of SDO is the first article. If you go to that link and pick Issue in the left column, you will see all of the articles in Volume 275. Most of the articles are Open Access, which means you can read them without a subscription. A book containing these articles will available later this year.