Displaying items by tag: IRIS

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (or IRIS) is a space probe, planned by NASA, to observe the Sun.

It is a NASA Small Explorer program mission to investigate the physical conditions of the solar limb, particularly the chromosphere of the Sun.

IRIS will observe how solar material moves, gathers energy, and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the sun's lower atmosphere. Tracking how material and energy move through this region is a crucial part of understanding the dynamics of the sun.

NASA announced on June 19, 2009 that IRIS was selected from six small explorer mission candidates^.