Scientists were left baffled after material broke off of the sun’s surface and created a tornado-like swirl around its northern pole.
The remarkable phenomenon was caught by NASA on the James Webb Space Telescope and tweeted by Dr. Tamitha Skov, a space weather forecaster.
Dr. Tamitha Skov
“Talk about Polar Vortex!”
Dr. Tamitha Skov
“Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of our Star."
Dr. Tamitha Skov
"Implications for understanding the Sun’s atmospheric dynamics above 55° here cannot be overstated!”
Unusual activity typically occurs at the sun’s 55-degree latitudes once every 11-year solar cycle, according to experts, but this incident is stumping researchers.
A prominence is a large, bright feature that extends outward from the sun’s surface. Other filament tear-aways have been observed in the past — not like this, though.
Solar physicist Scott McIntosh, the deputy director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, told Space.com that researchers aren’t sure what causes such a unique event.
Scott McIntosh
“Once every solar cycle, it forms at the 55-degree latitude and it starts to march up to the solar poles.”
Scott McIntosh
“It’s very curious. There is a big ‘why’ question around it. Why does it only move toward the pole one time and then disappear and then come back, magically, three or four years later in exactly the same region?”
While experts admit it probably has something to do with the sun’s magnetic field, the rest remains a mystery due to humanity’s limited view of its star.
The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter mission — which is taking photos of the sun while raising its orbit beyond the ecliptic plane — might provide answers, but until then, researchers are left scratching their heads.