A piece of the sun has broken off and formed a vortex in the northern pole, baffling scientists who are now curious to determine the actual cause of the incident.
NASA captured the historic phenomenon using the James Webb Space Telescope, as tweeted by a space weather forecaster, Dr. Tamitha Skov. She wrote last week, "Talk about Polar Vortex!" and added that material from a northern prominence on the sun broke off from the main filament and started to circulate in a massive polar vortex around our star's north pole.
A Piece of the Sun Broke Off
Skov also said that the implications for understanding our sun's atmospheric dynamics above 55 degrees latitude "cannot be overstated." Typically, unusual activity occurs at the star's 55-degree latitudes only one time for every 11-year solar cycle, which is why the recent incident is confounding researchers.
Scientists explain that prominence is a large and bright feature that protrudes from our star's surface. While scientists have observed other filament tear-aways in the past, there has been no incident similar to the most recent one, as per the New York Post.
In a statement, the deputy director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, solar physicist Scott McIntosh, said that the scientists are still unsure of what causes such a unique phenomenon.
He said that the entire situation was very curious and noted a big question mark surrounding the event. One question is why the broken-off piece only moved toward the pole once and then disappeared but suddenly came back a few years later in the same region.
Some experts agree that it could be due to the sun's magnetic field, but other questions remain mysterious due to humanity's minimal view of the star. Experts can only view our solar system's star from the "ecliptic plane," or the geometric plane that contains our planet's orbit.
Unprecedented Solar Event
Solar events are common since our star is increasing activity and experiencing more sunspots and flare events. So far this year, the sun has flared every single day, and it was found to have spat out several X-class and M-class flares last month, which are the biggest and second-biggest eruptions it is capable of making, according to Science Alert.
The sun's cycles coincide with the fluctuations in its magnetic field, which, when at its weakest, results in the magnetic poles switching places and the polarity of the magnetic field reversing. At this time, our solar system's star is at its most active period, which scientists call the solar maximum.
The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter mission aims to shed more light on the odd phenomenon in the next few years. The mission's objective is to take images of the sun from within Mercury's orbit, but it will have this tilted up by up to 33 degrees.
McIntosh noted that more than the timeframe the mission gives in trying to provide more information about the sun's activities would be needed to help experts solve the mystery of the polar vortex. He noted that scientists would likely need a completely new mission to do just that, as per Space.
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