Posted on 02/08/2023 8:11:16 AM PST by BenLurkin
A huge filament of solar plasma has broken off the sun's surface and is circling its north pole like a vortex of powerful winds, but scientists have no clue what caused it.
Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist and deputy director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, told Space.com that while he has never seen a vortex like this, something odd is happening at the sun's 55 degree latitudes with clockwork regularity once every solar cycle, the 11-year period characterized by an ebb and flow in the generation of sunspots and eruptions.
The prominence...that McIntosh describes as a "hedgerow in the solar plasma", appears exactly at the 55 degree latitude around the sun's polar crowns every 11 years. Scientists know that it has something to do with the reversal of the sun's magnetic field that happens once every solar cycle, but they have no clue what drives it.
Scientists have regularly observed filaments tear away from this pole-embracing plasma hedgerow, but they have yet to see it form such a polar whirlwind until now.
Scientists know that the sun's polar regions play a key role in the generation of the star's magnetic field, which, in turn, drives its 11-year cycle of activity. They couldn't, however, observe that region directly.
The European Space Agency Solar Orbiter mission may shed some light on this odd phenomenon in the coming years. The mission, which is taking images of the sun from within the orbit of Mercury, will have its orbit tilted by up to 33 degrees.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Wow, our SUVs really have an impact on the solar system. /sarc
So if it happens once every solar cycle of 11 years is it really someing unusual or odd.
Or just a story to fill the news cycle
First time seeing this particular phenomena.
Or the Solar Polar Vortex.
Really makes me wonder...
LOL
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