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.
The Sun prepares for an M-class flare
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta
Befor the occurrence of a large solar flare (such as an M- or an X-class flare), we often observe pre-flaring activity that displays interesting plasma dynamics governed by the Sun's magnetic field. This 30 s movie shows a 7-hour long solar evolution at the west limb, where we see several loops dancing up and down, and the coronal rain (condensation of plasma falling back to the Sun). Towards the last 10 s in the movie, we will see a sudden brightening, the flare, and its aftermath.