1,000 days of the sun in three minutes

In the spring of 2010, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, provided its first views of the sun. Since then the spacecraft has had virtually unbroken coverage of our star, capturing one image every 12 seconds in 10 different wavelengths.
This video is a time-lapse sequence of SDO observations that spans three years in the life of the sun.

COMET EXPLOSION

Almost 450 million km from Earth, Comet C/2012 X1 (LINEAR) has

exploded. Amateur astronomers are reporting a 200-fold increase in the

comet's brightness on Oct. 20th, and the comet's atmosphere or "coma"

now resembles that of exploding Comet 17P/Holmes in 2007. Using a

remotely-controlled 0.5 meter telescope in New Mexico, European

observers Ernesto Guido, Martino Nicolini and Nick Howes took this

picture of the spherical explosion on Oct 21st:

"The predicted magnitude of the comet, pre-outburst, was about +14,"

says Guido. "Now it is close to +8.5." This is below the threshold for

naked-eye visibility, but bright enough for backyard telescopes

equipped with digital cameras.

Prompted by the reports of Guido et al, Romanian amateur astronomer

Maximilian Teodorescu observed the comet on Oct. 22nd, confirming its

brightness and spherical structure: image. "It looked exactly like

Comet Holmes back in 2007," says Teodorescu.

Located in the constellation Coma Berenices, Comet LINEAR X1 rises in

the east about an hour before the sun. The low altitude of the comet

in morning twilight is a challenge. "I could not see the comet through

the eyepiece of my 4.5 inch refracting telescope," adds Teodorescu,

"but the camera detected it easily enough." The comet could become

brighter in the days ahead as its coma expands. Monitoring is

encouraged.