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.
Capturing the Formation of a Solar Prominence
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Wei Liu
Solar prominences are cool, chromospheric-temperature material suspended in the million-degree hot corona. How, when, and where prominences form remain a mystery. This prominence, observed by IRIS on 2019-Sep-12 on the southwest solar limb, appeared to be in its early formation phase where fresh cold material condenses out of nowhere in the hot corona and accumulates to form the bulk of the prominence. The prominence also exhibits everlasting, dynamic flows, including downflows that constitutes the return flow of the chromosphere-corona mass cycle. Such observations offer critical insights to understanding the formation, dynamic evolution, and the eventual eruptions of solar prominences.