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.
Bright Solar Filament
Credit: IRIS, LMSAL/NASA, IRIS, LMSAL/NASA
Solar filaments are long dark structures that form between opposite polarity magnetic fields but at coronal heights. One such filament is captured in this movie by the IRIS satellite. Some of the individual threads that make up the filament can be seen. Some of the threads brighten at various times (due to small scale re-connections) during the movie but towards the end, the whole filament brightens up, in other word, activates. Snapping of some of the bright threads can also be seen.