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.
Sunspot umbra and small eruptions
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Tiago Pereira
In this video IRIS is rapidly scanning the umbra of a sunspot (near the image center. Normally a dark region, in the higher layers of the Sun it can often appear brighter than the surroundings. Fast pulses known as umbral flashes can be seen. In the larger area surrounding the sunspot, several brightenings associated with small ejections are also seen, a result of the complex web of magnetic fields around the sunspot.