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.
Small flare in AR13500 right under the IRIS slit
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Gosic Milan
On November 29, 2023, IRIS was monitoring active region AR13500 with the hope of detecting a solar flare. This is a challenging task that requires a bit of luck. However, IRIS was able to capture a small C2.0 class flare exactly under the slit through which it collects light to record solar spectra in the far and near ultraviolet wavelength ranges. In this video, the flare is visible as strong bright features in the lower part of the field of view, indicating the release and transfer of magnetic energy into heating of the chromosphere and corona. During the flare, IRIS was running a specially designed observing program for rapid solar events like flares and recording images of the Sun at a remarkable cadence of about one second.