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.
Plasma motion above an active region
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA
Active regions are regions of increased activity on the Sun due to strong magnetic fields bursting through the photosphere into the solar atmosphere. These magnetic field lines often carry plasma, enabling us to see them evolve and interact. Here we see plasma dynamics above an active region as it rotates onto the solar disk, with continuous plasma surges and loop motions due to the increased activity.