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.
A Three-Ribbon Flare
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Jenna Samra (SAO)
In this movie of a C-class flare, we see two distinct stages of the event. A bright flash around 20:21:35 signals that magnetic reconnection has triggered a release of energy into the solar atmosphere. Three distinct flare ribbons appear around 21:00:45, as some of that energy is deposited into and heats the solar chromosphere.