IRIS Movie of the Day
At least once a week a movie of the Sun taken by NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) is posted by one of the scientists operating the instrument.
Mercury wobbles over the solar surface
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Bart De Pontieu
IRIS orbits Earth and takes 97 minutes to complete one orbit. Since IRIS is in a polar orbit it flies over the north pole and south pole 14 times per day. Since IRIS has different viewing angles as it observes Mercury while it cross the solar disk (alternating between looking from "above" when it's around the north pole and from "below" when it's around the south pole), Mercury looks like it is slightly wobbling up and down over the course of this movie of plasma at 10,000 K.