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.
Impulsive phase of a large solar flare
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Vanessa Polito
Solar flares are the most energetic manifestation of solar activity. They can vary in class and size, and are often characterized by a rapid and impulsive energy release. Studying the impulsive phase of flares may hold a key to understand the nature of these events. This video shows a typical example of a flare impulsive phase, that got captured by the IRIS slit. IRIS scanned the active region a few minutes before the flare occurred, during which time the flare activity started to slowly building up, until a very rapid and explosive energy release at the end of the movie.