A piece of Sun breaks off, NASA captures, scientists stunned - A puzzling news went viral on the weekend and was covered widely across national and international media. However, the outrageous headlines need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Did a piece of Sun break off? Not really. And no, astronomers and scientists are not stunned.
Nevertheless, news websites shot out headlines with misconstrued information. The original source of the news reports was a post on Twitter by a space weather physicist called Dr Tamitha Skov.
Dr Skov posted a clip of the Sun captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory of NASA. In the tweet on February 2, she wrote, “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.”
The words “broke away from the main filament” appears to have been simplified into misinformation.
So, what happened to the Sun? Did anything really “break off”?
Something did happen. But it wasn’t a “piece” but a “prominence” on the Sun. As per NASA’s definition, a solar prominence is a “large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface”. It adds that the “red-glowing looped material is plasma, a hot gas comprised of electrically charged hydrogen and helium”.
Image: Solar prominence | File Photo
In the specific incident, unusual movement was spotted in a normal solar prominence. It “broke away” or got detached from the Sun and circulated around its North pole. However, it was simplified into misinformation.
As per NASA, “stable prominences may persist in the corona for several months, looping hundreds of thousands of miles into space.”
“An erupting prominence occurs when such a structure becomes unstable and bursts outward, releasing the plasma,” NASA says. While prominences are normal, research is ongoing on how and why they are formed.
READ | NASA: Hidden light show discovered on the Sun by NuSTAR telescope
