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.
Zooming and arcing
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Patricia Jibben
There's a lot going on in this short IRIS observation of an active region. First, beyond the edge of the solar disk, there's plasma rising, falling, and generally zooming about in a phenomenon known as coronal rain. Unlike rain here on Earth, however, this "rain" is about 140,000 degrees Fahrenheit! Next, as the view scrolls to the right as IRIS rasters, we see an active region that flares, brightening and fading rapidly. Finally, above the flaring region, we see arcing loops brighten as plasma flows along them, a product of the flare energy release.