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.
Unveiling the mysteries of flare ribbons heating
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Vanessa Polito
Looking back at the spectacular data that have been provided by IRIS over the last few years, we stumbled upon this movie capturing the impulsive phase of a two-ribbon M-class flare. The movie shows the IRIS spectrograph slit scanning the so-called "ribbons", the elongated bright features which dominate these images. Studying the emission from the ribbon plasma may hold the key to understanding how flares are heated.