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.
Rainy day on the Sun
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Juraj Lorincik
The animation shows several extensive arches of plasma observed at the solar limb on 2022 September 9. These spectacular structures are known as coronal rain - a phenomenon during which cool plasma lifted into the ambient hot solar corona condenses and falls back to the solar surface along magnetic field lines. Apart from the coronal rain, in this observation IRIS also captured a solar flare visible in the top-left corner as well as a series of minor flares in the bright active region to the south.