NASA Lets Us Watch the Sun Spin For 3 Years In 4 Minute Video

An anonymous reader writes "Back in February 2010 NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory–a 3-axis stabilized satellite and fully redundant spacecraft. The aim of the SDO is to monitor solar activity and see how that impacts space weather. As part of its observations, the SDO captures an image of the Sun every 12 seconds using the onboard Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, but varies those shots across 10 different wavelengths. NASA has now collected three years worth of image data from the SDO and has put together a video letting us see the Sun spin in all its glory." If you watch closely, you can see individual frames containing the Moon and Venus.

Do they know why?

[gr8_phk]

Do they know why all the activity seems to be concentrated in 2 bands? One in the northern and one in the southern hemisphere. I would presume there is some sort of convection going on like on earth where there are westerly winds at some latitudes and easterly winds at others. But then why would that activity be on a 11 year cycle? I found this puzzling and am wondering if anyone knows the answers.