Images of the Sun from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory

This is our Sun as photographed on April 21st, 2010. The images were captured by NASA's new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). It's one of the first humbling, terrifying, and beautiful images returned by the spacecraft.

SDO was launched in February 2010 in a five year mission to study the sun's magnetic field. Its image quality is ten times better that 1080p television, four times the resolution of the previous king of the Sun observers, the STEREO spacecraft.







This video footage is simply stunning and utterly breathtaking. Watching this the whole way through is not a bad way to spend 4 minutes of your life.