The Sun is stirring from its latest slumber. As sunspots and flares, signs of a new solar cycle, bubble from the Sun’s surface, scientists are anticipating a flurry of solar activity over the next few years. Roughly every 11 years, at the height of this cycle, the Sun’s magnetic poles flip — on Earth, that’d be like the North and South Poles’ swapping places every decade — and the Sun transitions from sluggish to active and stormy. At its quietest, the Sun is at solar minimum; during solar maximum, the Sun blazes with bright flares and solar eruptions. In this video, view the Sun's disk from our space telescopes as it transitions from minimum to maximum in the solar cycle.

Music credit: "Observance" by Andrew Michael Britton [PRS], David Stephen Goldsmith [PRS] from Universal Production Music

Video credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Joy Ng (USRA): Producer
Tom Bridgman (GST): Data Visualizer
MariaJose Vinas Garcia (Telophase): Support
Pedro Cota (ADNET Systems): Support

This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13716

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