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 flares and their aftermath
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Jenna Samra
The solar magnetic field is capable of storing and rapidly releasing an immense amount of energy, producing complex sequences like the one shown here. Magnetic field lines twist and shear, building up stored energy, until they abruptly reconfigure in a process called magnetic reconnection. The stored energy is released as a bright flash of light: a solar flare. The first solar flare takes place early in this movie. In addition to the flare itself and the material ejected by the energy release, notice the faint loop structure off the edge of the sun. These "post-flare loops" are produced by plasma flowing along the reconfigured magnetic field lines. They evolve in the hours after the flare, and by the time a second flare occurs at the end of the movie, the original loops are gone.