NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope discovered that a chunk of the sun broke off. Read to know more about it and why it is baffling scientists.
A chunk of the sun has broken off!
Dr. Tamitha Skov took to Twitter to share that a ‘material’ from the sun’s prominence broke away from its main filament. Dr. Skov is a space weather physicist known for regularly sharing updates. As per the report, it is circulating in a “massive polar vortex” around the northern pole. A solar prominence is a large and bright feature extending outwards from the sun’s surface. Additionally, since they are anchored to the surface, they extend outwards and create a corona made of helium and hydrogen. However, prominence takes about a day to form but can last for months.
“Talk about Polar Vortex! 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!” tweeted Dr. Skov.
More on the discovery
Following the announcement on Twitter, a SpaceWeather.com report revealed a medium-sized powerful solar flare was behind the knocking of a short-wave radio on February 7. “Once every solar cycle, it forms at the 55-degree latitude and it starts to march up to the solar poles. 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 the same region?” stated Scott Mcintosh in the report.
Mcintosh is a solar physicist and the deputy director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. He added that he had never seen a vortex such as this. However, much confusion and doubt remain over the breaking off of a chunk of the sun. Some researchers believe it is related to the reversal of the magnetic field. As per the theory, some unexpected event occurs when the sun reaches the 55-degree latitude in the 11-year solar cycle.