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.
3D Structure in Solar Active Regions
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Don Schmit
The IRIS mission is built around a spectrograph that is able to divide up light coming from the Sun into the rainbow of individual colors that comprise it. This movie steps through those colors. We are looking at a magnetic region near the limb of the Sun. By scanning in wavelength (the physical measure of color) we see gases of different temperatures as well as different velocities.