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.
Dynamic brightenings in AR 12551
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Gregal Vissers (UiO)
On June 1 IRIS performed coordinated observations with Big Bear Solar Observatory of NOAA AR 12551 as it was rotating towards the limb, catching the bulk of the activity trailing the leading sunspot of this active region. The transient compact and loop-like brightenings seen in this movie at 1330 Angstrom result from the restructuring of the magnetic field. As new magnetic fields continuously emerge and interact with the existing fields, part of the magnetic energy that is released in this process goes into heating of the plasma, in turn causing the observed brightenings. The fast rastering that IRIS performed here provides detailed information on the evolution, dynamics and morphology of these brightenings, which is vital for understanding the physics of these phenomena, as well as of active region evolution in general.