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NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) has been studying the sun since 2010, generating about 1.5 terabytes of data every day. The goal of the mission is to understand how the Sun's powerful magnetic field is generated, maintained, and how the stored magnetic energy is converted into solar winds and other high-energy particles that influence the rest of the solar system, including Earth.

The spacecraft was developed at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland, and launched in February 2010. While the primary mission was scheduled to last about 5 years, the spacecraft carries enough fuel and resources to survive for at least 10 years.

Throughout the mission, SDO has been capturing breathtaking images and videos of the sun - some of these look too amazing to be real. The video below shows a summary of the beautiful visuals that SDO has captured in the past 5 years!

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