A new sun-studying satellite had its coming-out party Wednesday, when scientists involved in the project presented early imagery and videos from the spacecraft's instruments at a news conference at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, launched by NASA in February, gathers a voluminous stream of data about the star nearest Earth, observations that should help heliophysicists better understand the workings of the sun and improve forecasts of solar activity that can cause problems on Earth.