https://sputnikglobe.com/20230210/very-curious-scientists-baffled-by-images-showing-fragment-breaking-off-from-sun-1107286079.html
'Very Curious': Scientists Baffled by Images Showing Fragment Breaking Off From Sun
'Very Curious': Scientists Baffled by Images Showing Fragment Breaking Off From Sun
Sputnik International
The phenomenon, which is baffling scientists, was caught by NASA on the James Webb Space Telescope and shared to Twitter by Tamitha Skov, a space weather physicist and researcher based in Los Angeles.
2023-02-10T03:54+0000
2023-02-10T03:54+0000
2023-02-10T03:47+0000
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solar
solar system
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Scientists are scratching their heads after NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope revealed a large chunk of the sun’s surface breaking off of the star and circling its north pole like a vortex. The unexpected event has scientists both excited, as well as nervous.“Talk about Polar Vortex!” writes Skov on Twitter. “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. Implications for understanding the Sun’s atmospheric dynamics above 55° here cannot be overstated!”“Once every solar cycle, it forms at the 55-degree latitude and it starts to march up to the solar poles,” explains Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist and deputy director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.Scientists believe the answer lies within the sun’s magnetic field, but because they are only able to view the sun from Earth’s limited “ecliptic plane,” the sun’s activity still remains somewhat of a mystery.While it is typical for unusual activity like this to occur on the sun’s 55° latitudes once every 11-year solar cycle, this solar prominence, also known as a filament, is the first one to be observed circulating the region in a swirling motion as opposed to shooting out directly into space.The sun is coming to its most active phase in its 11-year solar cycle and will reach its highest level activity for that cycle in 2025. During this month alone, the sun has released multiple flares that were so powerful they were able to knock out shortwave radios on Earth.
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Mary Manley
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'Very Curious': Scientists Baffled by Images Showing Fragment Breaking Off From Sun
The phenomenon, which is baffling scientists, was caught by NASA on the James Webb Space Telescope and shared to Twitter by Tamitha Skov, a space weather physicist and researcher based in Los Angeles.
Scientists are scratching their heads after NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope revealed a large chunk of the sun’s surface breaking off of the star and circling its north pole like a vortex. The unexpected event has scientists both excited, as well as nervous.
“Talk about Polar Vortex!” writes Skov on Twitter. “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. Implications for understanding the Sun’s atmospheric dynamics above 55° here cannot be overstated!”
“Once every solar cycle, it forms at the 55-degree latitude and it starts to march up to the solar poles,” explains Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist and deputy director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
“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?”
Scientists believe the answer lies within the sun’s magnetic field, but because they are only able to view the sun from Earth’s limited “ecliptic plane,” the sun’s activity still remains somewhat of a mystery.
While it is typical for unusual activity like this to occur on the sun’s 55° latitudes once every 11-year solar cycle, this solar prominence, also known as a filament, is the first one to be observed circulating the region in a swirling motion as opposed to shooting out directly into space.
The sun is coming to its most active phase in its 11-year solar cycle and will reach its highest level activity for that cycle in 2025. During this month alone, the sun has released multiple flares that were so
powerful they were able to knock out shortwave radios on Earth.
