The Sun. Credit: NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory.

This amazing video of the sun from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows five years of sun time in three minutes.

The SDO scientists took a picture of the sun once every eight hours between June 2010 and 11 February 2015 and combined them to make the video.

The different colours represent different wavelengths (types) of light). In some parts of the video the colours are blended and in some parts they are alone.

Did you know the sun spins? I didn’t. It’s a ball of immensely hot hydrogen and helium gas (those are types of air) and different parts spin at different rates.

The middle of the sun is about 15 million degrees Celsius. That’s another way of saying very very very very hot. Fortunately it is about 150 million kilometres away from the Earth, so we don’t get burnt up. Even so, ultraviolet rays (invisible but powerful light) from the sun can give you sunburn.