200 Millionth Image from AIA

In all the hype about the Mercury transit last Monday, we overlooked another milestone in the SDO mission. On November 5, 2019, the AIA instrument returned its 200 millionth image. Here it is and it's a beauty in the AIA 171 Å passband!

The Sun looks like it is in solar minimum, with large polar coronal holes over the North and South poles. Hope for the future can be seen in the area with the black line drawn around it. That's active region 12750, a small bi-polar region that has the polarity of Solar Cycle 25 and an appropriately high latitude of 28°S. Other SC25 regions have been seen and they will become more frequent as SC25 starts its rise to maximum.

Mark Cheung, PI of AIA, made a movie to celebrate this milestone.

Congratulations to the AIA team for building a robust instrument that has returned excellent data for almost 10 years.