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.
Four flares, two eruptions, one active region
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Gregal Vissers (ISP/SU)
A blast from the past, active region NOAA AR 12087 was tremendously flare-productive delivering nearly 10 M-class flares, over a dozen C-class ones and one X-class flare within 5 days from rotating onto the disk. Here observed by IRIS on June 12-13 2014, four flares were (partially) caught, including an M1.0 flare early on in the observations and two C-class flares that led to eruptions towards the end of the sequence. While not operating at full spatial resolution (a choice made to allow sustained flare watching this region), the fine structure in the flare ribbons and in particular during the eruptions is evident and IRIS enables us to study their plasma dynamics in detail.