NASA SDO IRIS: Recording its largest Flare to date

On Jan. 28, 2014, NASA's Solar Observatory IRIS witnessed its strongest solar flare since it launched in the summer of 2013. Credit: NASA/IRIS

On Jan. 28, 2014, NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (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, with unprecedented resolution, into a layer of the sun's lower atmosphere just above the surface, called the chromosphere, the second of the three main layers in the Sun's atmosphere that is roughly 2,000 kilometers deep.

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 solar flare, which is the second strongest class flare after X-class solar flare, erupted from the area, sending light and x-rays into space.

IRIS studies the chromosphere, which is key to regulating the flow of energy and material as it travels 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.

On Jan. 28, 2014, NASA's recently-launched IRIS, observed its strongest solar flare to date. 

Credit: NASA /IRIS /SDO /Goddard Space Flight Center

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.

The Ames Pleiades supercomputer is used to carry out many of the numerical simulations that are led by the University of Oslo.