#SpacePorn - Celebrate Five Years Of Sun Watching By NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory

Prepare to enjoy some space pr0n at its finest in this celebratory video which marks five years of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The SDO was launched in 2010 to observe the sun and capture highly detailed imagery of our mother star.

In the video you can see some of the highlights, which include giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the sun's surface.

From NASA:

February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day. Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona.

By watching the sun in different wavelengths—and therefore different temperatures—scientists can watch how material courses through the corona, which holds clues to what causes eruptions on the sun, what heats the sun's atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move.

Below is a five year time-lapse of the sun, captured by SDO. Just in case you hadn't had your daily space pr0n fix.