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.
Constant Churning in the Solar Atmosphere
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Don Schmit
Sunspots and regions of very strong magnetic field are the sources of most solar flares and coronal mass ejections. But in fact there are weaker magnetic fields that appear all over the Sun. These weak magnetic fields are responsible for the dynamics we see in this movie. Small jets known as spicules cluster around these magnetic regions. Far above the solar limb, the bright emission comes from a prominence. Prominences occur where the magnetic field has become tangled so that it traps and suspends plasma.