NASA revealed this weekend that its space agency Interface Region Imagining Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft has observed its largest solar flare since launching back in June 2013, according to the NASA news release.
The large solar flare occurred on Jan. 28, 2014.
IRIS works by peering into a layer of the sun's atmosphere known as chromosphere, which is the "key to regulating the flow of energy and material" as they head from the sun's surface and out into space, according to NASA.
IRIS can't look at the entire sun at the same time however, so the team is in charge of making decisions regarding what region to provide important observations.
The team spotted a magnetically active region on the sun last month and focused IRIS on it to see how the solar material behaved under "intense magnetic forces," according to NASA.
At approximately 2:40 p.m. on Jan. 28, a moderate flare, labeled an M-class flare, erupted from the area, emitting x-rays into space.
An M-class flare is the second strongest class flare, after X-class.
"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," NASA said. "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 run by the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory of the ATC in Palo Alto, California. It was designed and constructed by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
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