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.
Curtains in the solar corona
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Joten Okamoto (NAOJ)
These curtain-like vertical structures are a solar prominence, which floats in the solar corona supported by invisible coronal magnetic fields. The material gradually falls down, while some dark features move up in between. These dynamics are very complex and one of the hot topics in solar physics.