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.
Flares, Surges, and Possibly Peakcock Tails in AR 12835 at the Southwest Limb
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Wei Liu
This movie was recorded by IRIS on July 7, 2021, showing active region (AR) 12835 when it was located at the southwest limb. This limb location provided us a unique perspective to view the region from the side, rather than from above when the region was located on the solar disk. There were multiple episodes of minor to moderate flaring activity, together with surges and coronal jets. The flares appeared as low-lying loops brightening in the upper portion of this movie. The jet during 06:10-06:25 UT was particularly interesting, showing a typical inverted-Y geometry, suggestive of the occurrence of magnetic reconnection. Just to the south of the central region at the limb, around 05:30-06:00 UT, there were some episodic brightenings of an arcade of coronal loops, which were possibly the limb version of "peakcock tails", a fascinating phenomenon discovered by IRIS. Such interesting observations are yet to be analyzed in detail to fully uncover their underlying physics.