Nasa chronicles 'violent dance' on face of the sun - video

WITH the sun expected to reach 'solar maximum' later this year Nasa has released a time-lapse film showing how sun spots and solar flares have waxed and waned across the face of the star over the last three years.

The images from the space agency's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which has been monitoring the sun since 2010, have been stitched together to create a three-minute movie that illustrates how volatile the surface of the sun really is.

"These images have regularly caught solar flares and coronal mass ejections in the act, types of space weather that can send radiation and solar material toward Earth and interfere with satellites in space," explains Nasa. "SDO's glimpses into the violent dance on the sun help scientists understand what causes these giant explosions - with the hopes of some day improving our ability to predict this space weather."

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Activity on the face of the sun is increasing as it approaches 'solar maximum', the peak of the solar cycle that takes around 11 years to complete and which can affect the Earth's climate and even regional weather patterns.

However, the sun's cycles can be hard to predict. The last solar maximum was in 2000, and this one was expected to arrive last year. It was thought it would be the strongest since 1958, but it is now expected to be one of the smallest for a century.