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.
Interaction of prominence bubbles
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Chunming Zhu
Solar prominences are relatively cool and dense ionized gases extending outward into the hot and tenuous corona. Occasionally, some bubble features are observed at the base of prominences. These bubbles appear as dark voids at the prominence temperature. This observation from IRIS shows the presence of such a bubble. What makes it more interesting is that another smaller bubble rises inside/beside the larger one, and extends beyond its top boundary into the prominence body. The small bubble breaks in a few minutes, while the larger one stays intact. Observations like this will help us understand the structure and interaction of the prominence bubbles, and their formation and evolution.