No, a piece of the sun didn't just 'break off'

You may have seen stories over the past week or so with headlines like, "Part of the sun breaks free and forms a strange vortex, baffling scientists," or "Unbelievable moment a piece of the sun BREAKS OFF baffles scientists" or even "NASA captures piece of sun breaking off, baffles scientists."

It all started with a harmless, informative tweet.

Tamitha Skov, a space weather forecaster and science communicator, tweeted her excitement that "material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament."

"Implications for understanding the sun's atmospheric dynamics above 55° here cannot be overstated!" 

But are scientists actually baffled?

Tamitha Skov laughs. 

"No," she said.

Instead, they're fascinated.

"The thing is, that first of all, scientists should be allowed to be curious and get excited about things they don't fully understand. Otherwise, what's the job of a scientist?"

Heliophysics — the study of the sun — is a fairly young branch of astronomy, Skov notes, which is why when something different happens on our nearest star, scientists get excited. 

The eight-hour event started off with a solar prominence (also known as a solar filament), that began to rise up near the north pole of the sun, which is seen at the top in satellite images. Prominences are made up of plasma, a hot gas of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. They are common on the sun, but it was the location of this one — at the sun's north pole — that was of particular interest to heliophysicists. 

"What ended up happening was something that started off as a very normal, average, what we call a polar crown filament. It became this kind of big tower, like a big volcano that was beginning to rise up near the very northern pole," Skov explained.

The prominence was near the top of the north pole, above 60 degrees latitude where it got caught in an electromagnetic wind. 

"And it began to yank and pull at some of the material in that prominence," Skov said.