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.
Old Faithful
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA
Active region 12599 is small region with a lot of pep, producing numerous explosive events and jets as it crossed the solar disk. The first movie shows an explosive event with bright streaks stretching along an arc whilst light walls rise and fall above the surface like ocean waves. A day later, the region spits a jet of plasma high into the corona but lacking enough energy to overcome gravity, the plasma falls back toward the Sun. Finally, the region reaches the limb and as our eyes have imagined earlier, we can finally see plasma geysering above the solar limb.