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.
Coordination with MaGIXS Sounding Rocket
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Lucas Guliano (SAO)
On July 30th, the Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrograph (MaGIXS) sounding rocket launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The flight was successful and the instrument captured images of the Sun in "soft" X-rays; a wavelength that had not been previously observed in such detail. Part of the mission's success was collaboration with solar telescopes around the world (and in space!) including IRIS. The target of the coordination was the bright active region 12849. IRIS took several scans of the region before, during, and after the launch (see movie above) to provide important context data to the MaGIXS team. The MaGIXS data has not yet been fully investigated, but the hope is that these datasets can provide insight into the long puzzling coronal heating problem.