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At 2:40 p.m. EST, a moderate flare, labeled an M-class flare — which is the second strongest class flare after X-class – erupted from the area, sending light and x-rays into space. IRIS studies the layer of the sun’s atmosphere called the chromosphere that is key to regulating the flow of energy and material as they travel from the sun's surface out into space. Along the way, the energy heats up the upper atmosphere, the corona, and sometimes powers solar events such as this flare. IRIS is equipped with an instrument called a spectrograph that can separate out the light it sees into its individual wavelengths, which in turn correlates to material at different temperatures, velocities and densities. 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Solar flares are bursts of X-rays and light that stream out into space, but no one yet knows the fine details of what sets them off. By observing a layer of the sun’s lower atmosphere called the chromosphere, which helps regulate how energy and material flows up from the sun's surface, IRIS can see part of the process that powers these events. However, there's a bit of luck involved in making such observations. IRIS’s instruments can’t look at the entire sun at once, so scientists must decide what areas might be the most interesting to watch. On January 28, scientists focused IRIS’s telescope and imaging spectrograph on a magnetically active region on the sun. Perfect timing: They witnessed a medium-sized solar flare in the act of erupting. Watch the video to see the flare through IRIS's eyes. || ", "release_date": "2014-03-20T00:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:51:04.665869-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 457093, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011400/a011467/cover-1024.jpg", "filename": "cover-1024.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "NASA's new eye on the sun shows intricate details of a solar flare.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } }, { "id": 4146, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4146/", "page_type": "Visualization", "title": "IRIS close-up of a solar flare", "description": "The Slit-Jaw Imager (SJI) aboard IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) observes a tiny region of the Sun at an image resolution (0.166 arc-seconds per pixel) almost four times higher than the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) (0.6 arc-seconds per pixel). In addition, IRIS has a narrow slit in the imaging plane (the thin, dark vertical line in the center of the inset) which directs some of the light to a spectrograph which allows solar physicists to determine velocity and temperature of the solar plasma.In this zoom-in from a full-disk view of the Sun from SDO, the imager is observering the Sun at a wavelength of 133nm (1330 angstroms). The imager field-of-view is moved across the solar disk in four steps, allowing the slit to pass over different regions of the Sun to determine the properties of the plasma.Note: IRIS and SDO are in very different orbits. You can see samples of the orbits at The 2013 Earth-Orbiting Heliophysics Fleet. IRIS is in a near-Earth orbit, while SDO is much higher at geosynchronous orbit. This difference in camera location creates a small parallax between the images composited from these two cameras. || ", "release_date": "2014-02-21T10:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:51:10.127894-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 458248, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004100/a004146/SDO171IRISinsetZoom_stand.HD1080i.00200.jpg", "filename": "SDO171IRISinsetZoom_stand.HD1080i.00200.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Zoom in combining SDO imagery at 17.1 nm and IRIS/SJI at 133nm.", "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "pixels": 2073600 } }, { "id": 11256, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11256/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "IRIS: Studying the Energy Flow that Powers the Solar Atmosphere", "description": "In late June 2013, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. IRIS will tease out the rules governing the lowest layers of the solar atmosphere — historically some of the hardest to untangle. Known as the solar interface region, this is one of the most complex areas in the sun's atmosphere: all the energy that drives solar activity travels through it. The interface region lies between the sun’s 6,000-degree, white-hot, visible surface, the photosphere, and the much hotter multi-million-degree upper corona. Interactions between the violently moving plasma and the sun’s magnetic field in this area may well be the source of the energy that heats the corona to its million-degree temperatures, some hundreds and occasionally thousands of times hotter than the sun's surface. The chromosphere is also considered a candidate as the origin for giant explosions on the sun such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. IRIS will use high-resolution images, data and advanced computer models to unravel how solar gases move, gather energy and heat up through the lower solar atmosphere. Outfitted with state-of-the-art tools, IRIS will be able to tease apart what's happening in the solar interface region better than ever before. || ", "release_date": "2013-06-19T07:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:52:03.795213-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 465631, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011200/a011256/IRIStrailer340.jpg", "filename": "IRIStrailer340.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "IRIS Mission TrailerView the video on YouTube. For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 320, "height": 180, "pixels": 57600 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [], "newer_versions": [], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }