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.
Evolution of a solar prominence
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Gosic Milan
From Oct 16 until Oct 20, 2019, IRIS was following a large prominence, cool and dense ionized gas surrounded by a million Kelvin hot coronal plasma. During this period, the prominence went from being fully developed to a complete disappearance, and finally to formation phase again. Capturing formation phase of solar prominences is an extremely challenging task, let alone complex evolution scenarios as in this case. The movie shown here reveals the tracked prominence during its mature phase.