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.
Looking through the rain
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, MSU, Sean Brannon
Coronal loops appear when magnetic field lines are filled with hot plasma. This plasma then radiates away its energy, cooling and condensing out of the loops in a process called coronal rain. This process is most spectacular when viewed off the edge of the Sun against the black space behind. In this movie, we view the coronal rain by scanning through different wavelengths, separating out the plasma emission in the raining loops. In this way we are able to see through different layers in the plasma.