Scientists believe the Interface Regional Imaging Spectrograph can help them understand the process. IRIS is a small satellite that can perform complex solar observations.
Alan Title is the IRIS lead investigator. He is based at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center in California.
“What we want to discover is what the basic physical processes are that transfer energy and material from the surface of the sun out to the outer atmosphere to the corona. And remember, the corona extends throughout the heliosphere. We live in the sun’s outer atmosphere.”
IRIS will provide highly detailed images that will show even individual structures of energy as they stretch away from the sun. NASA officials say the images will be three to four times as detailed as those from the agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
IRIS will also provide spectra. Spectra measures different wavelengths of light at once.
NASA says IRIS will observe temperatures extending from about 5,000 to 65,000 degrees Celsius. That number will rise to about ten million degrees during solar flares. But, lead investigator Alan Title notes IRIS will keep a safe distance from the sun.
“IRIS flies around the Earth so it only gets about 600 kilometers closer to the sun than here we are on Earth, and that’s only about 92 million miles away. So it’s really not very much closer to the sun.”
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25