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.
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15 Feb 2018
The triggering of a powerful explosion
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Tiago M. D. Pereira, UiO
This movie shows IRIS observations of a solar flare, a large explosion in the solar atmosphere. This was one of the most energetic flares, so called class X, that is hundreds of times more powerful than most flares. The IRIS observations show the triggering of the flare, with lingering and sporadic brightenings (reflecting heating fronts) occurring before the large scale flare. Devastating energy fronts (flare ribbons) move quickly through the solar plasma and heat it to millions of degrees.