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.
Intenstive X1.2 flare from AR 13182 at east limb
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Chunming Zhu
IRIS captures this beautiful and intensive (X1.2) solar flare at the solar east limb. IRIS has three orbits on this target, covering different stages of the flare including its early evolution, peak, and decay phase, respectively (see IRIS website). The video displayed here covering the decay phase shows the beautiful flare loop structure, and materials flowing and falling back to the solar surface (known as coronal rains). The early stage evolution suggests the eruption is associated with the rising of some small-scale dense materials above the solar surface (or mini-filament). It could be interesting to learn from this event to address how this small-scale eruption of the mini-filament produces such an intensive flare.