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.
Interesting Prominence on Southwest Limb
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, Wei Liu (BAERI)
Solar prominences are cool material suspended in the million-degree hot corona. This interesting prominence was observed by IRIS over multiple orbits starting at about 12:09 UT on September 19, 2023. There are a multitudes of dynamic flows all over the place. Some flows follow curved trajectories, even with apparently sharp turns, presumably along magnetic field lines. Some other flows exhibit meandering trajectories or even turbulent patterns. The physical nature of such cool material, their dynamic behaviors, and their magnetic field environments are still not well understood. These fine IRIS observations provide opportunities to shed light on their physical nature and probe this intriguing phenomenon.