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!

SDO's Fifth Anniversary and DSCOVR's New Beginning

SDO's 5th anniversary of launch was celebrated with the release of a Five year video by the GSFC Office of Communications.

We also attended the opening of the Solarium exhibit that features SDO imagery and SOHO sounds opened yesterday at the Goddard Visitor Center. It is a cool way to watch hi-res images from SDO. The people who built SDO came by and we celebrated SDO's anniversary. (A rather interesting review appeared on this website.)

Another Space Weather spacecraft was launched yesterday. Welcome to the universe DSCOVR! Now we have two reasons to celebrate February 11.

Four Years of SDO and A New Look for our Website!

It was a cold day in Florida when SDO was launched on February 11, 2010. The Goddard Space Flight Center, along with much of the East Coast of the US, was snowed in with 4 ft of snow. The launch went beautifully and we started returning science data in April. To date, SDO has returned over 130 million images of the Sun. There are over 2000 papers discussing SDO in the NASA ADS abstract service, with 750 different people as first authors. We provide data to space weather forecasters and the public. It is nice to see SDO movies showing a prominence eruption on the nightly broadcast news, especially in the below-average level of activity we are seeing in Solar Cycle 24.

As we begin the fifth year of our prime mission we have updated our website. The main goal is to make it work more easily with mobile devices. The links should be the same, pointing you to the near-realtime SDO images. Try out the new website at http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov. Tell us what you think at the SDO Twitter feed.

Thanks for looking at SDO data and making us a great mission. Here's an AIA 193 image that seems to have the Sun smiling at us as we start our fifth year.

SDO is GO!

SDO Launched Three Years Ago

Three years ago, the Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched into orbit atop an Atlas V rocket. Here is a NASA video showing the launch and the amazing waves that rippled away from the rocket has we passed through a sundog. We were launched to "learn why our star is changing our lives." Since then we have been busy doing that. SDO data is helping us understand how the million-Kelvin corona is heated, letting us watch magnetic recombination take place, and understand how the magnetic field creates solar activity. Our data has been examined by people around the world, using the SDO websites and HelioViewer. 

SDO is a great mission and we look forward to the next year of spectacular data!

SDO Second Anniversary

At 10:23 am ET on February 11, 2010 SDO rose into the sky atop an Atlas V booster. 108 minutes later we were a free-flying satellite! In the 2 years since we have taken about 70 million images of the Sun, in EUV wavelengths, Doppler and Zeeman filtergrams, and EUV spectra. We have seen late phases of flares, magnetic fields as they rise to the solar surface, and 2 comets. Enormous prominence eruptions have been a favorite, especially when the material brightens as it splashes back down onto the surface.

This year we will watch as Solar Cycle 24 approaches solar maximum, at least in the northern hemisphere. Venus will go across the face of the Sun on June 5-6. It will be another banner year of SDO data and science.

Happy Birthday SDO!

SDO is still GO!

Waves of Destruction during the Launch of SDO

Millersville undergraduate meteorology major, Adam Jacobs, presented "Waves of Destruction" at the 91 Annual Meeting of the AMS in Seattle this past January. The waves are seen starting at about 6 seconds in this video. Adam received a certificate for the best oral presentation of the 18th Conference on Planned and Inadvertent Weather Modification. You can watch his recorded presentation at the AMS Website

Congratulations Adam!