NASA’s IRIS Finds Solar Tornadoes, Bombs, and More
Last edited Thu Oct 23, 2014, 12:00 AM - Edit history (1)
NASA’s IRIS Finds Solar Tornadoes, Bombs, and More
By: Monica Young | October 22, 2014
New IRIS results show a Sun rife with twisting and snapping magnetic fields, data that will elicit clues on what bakes the puzzlingly hot corona.
The Sun’s visible surface gives off the radiation that governs our daily life. And during the rare occasion of a total solar eclipse, we can glimpse the tenuous, white-hot corona. But only if our eyes are very good can we see the red flame of the chromosphere, a thin layer sandwiched between the Sun’s surface and its extended atmosphere.
Even using spacecraft, it’s difficult to study the so-called interface region, which contains the chromosphere and the transition region right above it. But this is where the party’s at. Here, magnetic fields snap and pop, accelerating and heating particles a thousandfold — a party trick that scientists still don’t understand — before they reach the million-degree corona.
Now, first results from NASA’s sungazing spacecraft IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph), published in the October 17th Science, are shedding light on this complex region. “Even seeing this part of the solar atmosphere at all in this detail is amazing!” says Louise Harra (UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK), who wrote a perspective piece accompanying the science results.
Launched in June 2013 to an earthbound orbit, IRIS views the Sun in ultraviolet light through an 8-inch scope, capturing detailed images and spectra at high frame rates. The data effectively point a magnifying glass on a scarcely studied, yet crucial region of the Sun’s atmosphere.
More:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/iris-sun-twists-bombs-flares/#sthash.TAcjS9ES.dpuf