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Imagine being surrounded by golden waves and currents flowing along the sun as it turns. Watch the sun rotate from Earth’s perspective. “Solarium,” a permanent exhibit at the NASA Goddard Visitor Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, brought this experience to visitors on Feb. 11. Visitors witnessed awe-inspiring imagery from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, on a floor-to-ceiling projection. 

SDO observes the sun almost once every second, in wavelengths ranging from extreme ultraviolet (invisible to the human eye) to visible light. After datasets reach the ground, a NASA team processes them multiple times to produce images for projection, 4,096 pixels square. Images at this extremely high resolution could fill the screens of nine HD televisions. These images become time-lapse videos for Solarium, which displays enhanced views of enthralling solar events, selected for their aesthetic quality. 

Not only does Solarium highlight the artistic side of heliophysics (the study of the sun and its interactions with Earth), but it provides visitors with visuals to show how materials travel throughout the solar atmosphere. Viewers observe solar flares, sunspots and eruptions as material and gas flow along the sun’s magnetic field lines. Fiery explosions of energy, projected in combination with soothing sounds, captivate audiences.

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“The big thing is the emotion connection...between the sound and the visual, it’s very impressive,” said Scott Wiessinger, heliophysics video producer at NASA Goddard.

Visitors can fully experience the beauty and wonder of the sun in this innovative video art exhibition.  “Solarium does something greater than inform: it inspires,” said Genna Duberstein, Solarium multimedia producer at NASA Goddard.

Solarium is on permanent display and open to the public at the NASA Goddard Visitor Center.