English: While many in the U.S. experienced a total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017, SDO's perspective, observing the Sun from Earth orbit, afforded it a view of a partial eclipse.

This movie, created from images taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows the Sun first in visible light, and then in 171-angstrom extreme ultraviolet light. The apparent slight movement of the Sun is because SDO has a hard time keeping the Sun centered in its images during eclipses, with so much light being blocked by the Moon. The fine guidance systems on SDO's instruments need to see the whole Sun in order keep the images centered from one exposure to the next.

Once the transit was over, the fine guidance systems started back up, once again providing steady images of the Sun.

Credit: NASA/SDO

This video is public domain and along with additional graphics may be downloaded from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12688

If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/NASAExplorer

Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

· Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC

· Twitter https://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

· Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/

· Instagram http://www.instagram.com/nasagoddard/

· Google+ http://plus.google.com/+NASAGoddard/posts