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 bustling solar atmosphere
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Paul Bryans
The IRIS observation shows just how energetic an environment the solar atmosphere can be. The main event is a small C4.7 flare which reveals itself in the bright loops on the surface. There is also another flare that is just outside the field-of-view, but results in extremely large loops that rise high above the solar surface. Watch, too, the interesting battle between the forces of magnetism and gravity. The magnetic field is strong enough to lift and suspend material high into the Sun's atmosphere, but gravity is working to pull that material back to the surface.