Feb 11

Part of The Sun Has Broken Off

Sciencealert.com reports: Material from a filament of plasma erupting from the Sun’s surface broke away and appeared to form a crown-like vortex over the solar north pole.

Solar flare activity is not entirely unexpected currently. The sun is ramping up its activity with sunspot and flare activity. It has flared every day this year so far, and it spat out several X-class and M-class flares in January 2023, the biggest and second-biggest eruptions the Sun is capable of.

Scientists say this is nothing to be alarmed about. The Sun undergoes activity cycles every 11 or so years, from relatively quiet and peaceful, to temperamental.

These cycles coincide with fluctuations in the solar magnetic field. When the magnetic field is at its weakest at the poles, the Sun’s magnetic poles switch places, and the polarity of the magnetic field reverses. This is when the Sun is at its most active, known as solar maximum.

We’re right on the cusp of solar maximum. Because the Sun is so enigmatic and difficult to predict, we don’t know precisely when the polarity reversal will occur (scientists can usually only make a ruling after the event), but we do know a rough ballpark: Our current predictions place it in July 2025.

But the current cycle is also a bit strange. Not all solar cycles are built alike; some are stronger, some are weaker. Solar scientists can make predictions about the progression of the solar cycle ahead… but from very early on in the current cycle, which started in December 2019, the Sun’s activity has significantly exceeded expectations and continues to do so.

This brings us back to the weird little polar tizzy observed on 2 February. From what scientists can tell so far, it started with a solar prominence, a bright filament of plasma that extends outward from the surface of the Sun.

Not only are solar prominences normal, but so were the location and type of this particular one. A large “hedgerow” prominence – so named because it resembles a hedge – often occurs around the crown of the Sun, at high latitudes.

But what happened next was not: Material seemed to break away, circling the pole at 60 degrees latitude over about 8 hours, at a speed of about 96 kilometers (60 miles) per second.

Solar physicist Scott McIntosh of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research – who has been observing the Sun for decades trying to understand its cycles – told Space.com that he had never seen a “vortex” like the one that occurred when a piece of the prominence broke away and was whipped into the solar atmosphere.

We’ll have to wait to find out more about the strange event. Scientists are no doubt even now analyzing the wealth of data we have from round-the-clock solar observatories, so hopefully, that wait won’t be too long. Because the solar poles are difficult to observe, the findings should be very interesting.

Meanwhile, the predictions of McIntosh and his team more closely match the observed solar cycle to date than any other prediction.

 

You can read the full article here

 

6 Responses to “Part of The Sun Has Broken Off”

  1. Blake S

    Watch a movie called Shoot The Moon on Vimeo. The producer did some Videography of the sun and as he films the sun with a H-Alpha filter he captures evidence of the second soon. The second sun has been captured by several other astronomers using unedited video footage.

  2. m99

    Above it mentioned the Sun moves from being ‘relatively quiet and peaceful, to temperamental.’ Gee, that’s me too on any given month. Give me coffee and quite times in the morning and I’m nice. Play nice Mr. Sun!

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