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.
Lots of Loops at the Limb
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Lucas Guliano
Observations at the limb usually produce some of the most visually interesting datasets since the solar material is much more visible when the black of space is the background instead of the solar disk. This dataset highlights the variety of looping structures that can often be seen around active regions as energetic material flows along the magnetic field lines. At the start, a flare can be observed that ejects some material before it forms into a swirling loop. After being lifted from the disk via these loop structures, the material returns back to the Sun in the form of coronal rain.