Whirlpool of plasma spotted on the Sun
NASA has observed a rare circular pattern streaming at top speed from the Sun
A rarely observed encircling filament on the Sun has been captured by a NASA spacecraft. The space agency has released an image which shows a dark filament encircling an active region on the solar surface, and while it admits it “may have no major scientific value” it is, nevertheless, rather intriguing.
Photographed by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) between 29 and 31 October, the pattern is understood to be streaming at close to 11,200kph (7,000mph), and is a cloud of charged particles that hover over the Sun's surface. Invisible magnetic fields keep it in place, but the curious thing is that they tend to be stretched like a strand, rather than circular.
“[It is] an oddity that the spacecraft has rarely observed before,” said a statement put out by NASA. “Only a handful of times before have we seen one shaped like a circle.” It further explains that the black area to the left of the active region is a coronal hole, a magnetically open region of the Sun, and that the still was taken in a wavelength of extremeultraviolet light.
The SDO has been observing the Sun since 2010, and it hopes to give a greater understanding of the influence the Sun has on the Earth and near-Earth space. It stares at our nearest star to record solar weather in many wavelengths simultaneously. Solar filaments, meanwhile, tend to last for a few weeks or months, although their birth and death is something scientists are continuing to study.