The sun looks like it's doing a somersault in this dizzying GIF from NASA
NASA probably has one really dizzy spacecraft on its hands.
The space agency's Solar Dynamic's Observatory (SDO) performed a planned roll maneuver on July 6 that turned it 360 degrees and produced a disorienting GIF of the sun flipping around in the process.
While the GIF shows the roll happening in just one second, the SDO's maneuver that produced the images occurred over the course of 7 hours.
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The observatory took a photo of the sun once every 12 seconds during the movement, according to NASA.
This kind of roll happens two times per year in order to help calibrate the SDO's Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI), designed to look at the outer edge of the sun from the spacecraft's perspective.
"Were the sun perfectly spherical, this would be a much simpler task. But the solar surface is dynamic, leading to occasional distortions," NASA said in a statement.
"This makes it hard for HMI to find the sun’s edge when it’s perfectly still. HMI’s biannual roll lets each part of the camera look at the entire perimeter of the sun, helping it map the sun’s shape much more precisely."
NASA's SDO is one in a fleet of sun-gazing satellites designed to keep a robotic eye on our closest star. The spacecraft is responsible for creating some of the highest resolution photos of solar flares, coronal holes and solar prominences emanating from the star.
Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
