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.
Small flares during solar activity minimum
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Paola Testa
Although the Sun is in a rather quiet phase of its activity cycle, energetic phenomena such as flare are still occurring. IRIS observed a few small flares occuring in AR 12760 at roughly the same location over a few hours. The largest event is observed toward the end of the movie (around 11:53UT on 2020/04/30). IRIS observed at a high temporal cadence (with exposure time of ~2s at each slit position), and obtained spectral data (under the slit, which is observed as a dark vertical line in the images of this movie) for several locations of the bright flare ribbons.