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.
Solar prominence with bubble
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Krzysztof Barczynski
Solar prominences are cool, dense ionised gas (plasma) structure of the chromospheric-temperature material that is suspended in the million-Kelvin hot corona. On 28-September-2019 IRIS observed the prominence at the south-west limb. The prominence plasma created arc-shape structures that highly evolve with time. The dark cavity surrounded by the arc-shape structures is called a prominence bubble. Many question related to the formation, temporal and spatial evolution, as well as the eruption of the solar prominence, is still an open issue. The prominence observations, such as example presented in the movie, allow to understand the origin and nature of the solar prominences better.