On
Jan. 28, 2014, NASA's newly-launched Interface Region Imaging
Spectrometer, or IRIS, observed its strongest solar flare to date.Image Credit: NASA/IRIS/SDO/Goddard Space Flight Center. Download high resolution video
On Jan. 28, 2014, NASA's IRIS witnessed its strongest solar flare since it launched in the summer of 2013.
Image Credit:
NASA/IRI. Large Image
On Jan. 28, 2014, NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS,
witnessed its strongest solar flare since it launched in the summer of
2013. Solar flares are bursts of x-rays and light that stream out into
space, but scientists don't yet know the fine details of what sets them
off.
IRIS
peers into a layer of the sun's lower atmosphere just above the
surface, called the chromosphere, with unprecedented resolution.
However, IRIS can't look at the entire sun at the same time, so the team
must always make decisions about what region might provide useful
observations. On Jan. 28, scientists spotted a magnetically active
region on the sun and focused IRIS on it to see how the solar material
behaved under intense magnetic forces. 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. The spectrograph on IRIS was pointed right into the heart of
this flare when it reached its peak, and so the data obtained can help
determine how different temperatures of material flow, giving scientists
more insight into how flares work.
The IRIS mission is managed by the Lockheed Martin Solar and
Astrophysics Laboratory of the ATC in Palo Alto, Calif. NASA’s Ames
Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., is responsible for mission
operations and the ground data system. The Ames Pleiades
supercomputer is used to carry out many of the numerical simulations
that are led by the University of Oslo. The IRIS telescope was designed
and built by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory while Montana
State University faculty and students assisted in the design of the
spectrograph. A large volume of science data is downlinked via Kongsberg
Satellite Services, (KSAT) facilities through a cooperative agreement
between NASA and the Norwegian Space Centre. NASA’s Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., oversees the Explorers Program from
which IRIS evolved.
