Gregory Robinson
The sun is clearly a very important part of our solar system; it radiates light and heat which makes it possible for life on Earth to exist. But did you know a scientists observed a piece of the sun 'break away'?
NASA’s James Webb Telescope captured the moment a section of the sun left the surface and was swept up in a polar vortex, and it understandably became a viral moment.
Space weather physicist and research scientist Tamitha Skov, from The Aerospace Corporation in Southern California, shared the news of the event on X as well as as imagery.
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"Talk about Polar Vortex!" she shared. "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."
She added: “Implications for understanding the Sun's atmospheric dynamics above 55° here cannot be overstated!”
The event happened on February 2, 2023. A solar prominence is a big, bright feature extending outward from the sun’s surface, NASA explains. They are anchored to the sun’s surface in the photosphere (the sun's outer layer) and extend outwards into the sun’s, ‘hot outer atmosphere, called the corona’.
The ‘red-glowing looped material’ which forms a solar prominence is plasma - a super-hot gas consisting of electrically charged hydrogen and helium.
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So, to put it more simply, a large piece of plasma broke away from the sun’s surface and circled around its North Pole. The polar vortex it was swept up in is different to a polar vortex we might experience on Earth.
On our home planet, a polar vortex is a large area of cold air and low pressure that appears in the stratosphere, surrounding both of Earth’s poles, according to the National Weather Service.
Why was this 2023 event on the sun so exciting? Because it’s not always seen.
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Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist and deputy director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, told Space.com that the prominence mentioned by Skov appears exactly at the 55 degree latitude around the sun’s polar crowns every 11 years.
Scientists say it has something to do with the reversal of the sun’s magnetic field, which happens once every solar cycle, but they don’t know what’s behind it.
"Once every solar cycle, it forms at the 55 degree latitude and it starts to march up to the solar poles," McIntosh said. "It's very curious. There is a big 'why' question around it. Why does it only move toward the pole one time and then disappears and then comes back, magically, three or four years later in exactly the same region?"