Curious Files Dept... Solar Plasma Loop Becomes A Very-Temporary Solar/Polar... "Halo"?

Okay -- first, the technical aspects (on a quiet Sunday morning, with clear skies, free of. . . "red" balloons, at the moment at least!) -- as a ~24 MB gif file, the movie at right (capturing about a month of solar observations, in ultraviolet wavelengths) will take a moment to load, unless you are on wi-fi. But once it animates, look closely at the top of the globe. Late in the series, shortly after 02.05.23, you will begin to notice a darker ring around the top of the globe, down at about one-sixth of a radius, from the pole. That dark halo (in this wavelength) is a polar vortex of cooling plasma material -- that was ejected from a massive plasma arc, near the pole, in the last two weeks.

It is not alarming -- just. . . new. Similar, smaller arcs (or ropey loops -- see below right, for one of those, also animated) have been observed many times, but this was the first recording of an entire loop detaching from the solar "surface" (really just the top layer of a vast cauldron of boiling hydrogen fueled fusion explosions), escaping into space, and then being pulled back down by the Sun's immense gravitational and magnetic forces. . . to become a sort of aurora borealis, around the top of the globe. It is already fading out, but indicates (once again!) that our mathematical models of how that fusion-fired furnace works. . . may well be incomplete. Or in need of revision. Grin.

Here's some of the better popular press reportage on it this week -- but truly, nothing of danger to Earth -- just more mysterious space physics, in all her myriad wonders:

. . .A normal “prominence” on the Sun was spotted doing something unusual. A solar prominence is loop of electrically charged gas called plasma, which often spout out of the Sun. Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist and deputy director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, told Space.com that a prominence like this happens at the same 55º latitude every 11 years or so. . . . .

What happened on Feb. 2 was that a prominence became detached. . . then whirled around above the Sun’s north pole. . . .

Scientists don’t know why the event happened because they have no images of the Sun’s polar regions, but they might soon get more clues. In February 2025 the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft will begin an inclined orbit of the Sun, beginning its “high-latitude” mission during which it will take the first top-down images of the Sun’s polar regions. . . .

Now you know. Back to lobbyists, and lobbying next -- for Amgen. Smiling into the warming sunshine -- and amazed at the endless warmth she offers, and we largely take for granted -- each morning, when she rises.

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