Solar Orbiter unveils sun’s chaotic magnetic south pole in historic first

The sun’s secret south pole has stepped into the light.

For the first time, humanity has captured striking views of the sun’s mysterious polar region, thanks to the Solar Orbiter spacecraft.

In a daring maneuver, the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA mission swooped below the solar system’s planetary plane to capture the sun’s elusive south pole. The spacecraft dipped 15 degrees below the solar equator to conduct its first high-angle observations.

“Today we reveal humankind’s first-ever views of the sun’s pole,” ESA’s director of science, Prof Carole Mundell, said

 “The sun is our nearest star, giver of life and potential disruptor of modern space and ground power systems, so it is imperative that we understand how it works and learn to predict its behaviour. These new unique views from our Solar Orbiter mission are the beginning of a new era of solar science.”

Magnetic mosaic confirmed at last

But the Solar Orbiter revealed more than just images. It uncovered a chaotic magnetic patchwork that scientists believe holds the key to the sun’s 11-year polarity flip.

Unlike Earth, which behaves like a bar magnet with fixed poles, the sun’s magnetic field flips roughly every 11 years. It is currently nearing solar maximum, the peak of activity when sunspots and solar flares are most intense and a polarity reversal looms.

Early magnetic field measurements from the probe reveal a fragmented mosaic of both north and south polarities at the sun’s base.

This chaotic magnetic patchwork had long been predicted in computer models but never directly observed.

Scientists say tracking these dramatic polar changes is key to improving forecasts of the solar cycle.

 “Everything in the atmosphere of the sun and whole character of the sun is generated by its magnetic field and how that changes over time. It goes from being a fairly quiet star to being a really active and dynamic star with explosions in the atmosphere. Although the models predicted that the field should be mixed up, it’s something else to actually see it,” The Guardian quoted Prof Lucie Green, UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, who has worked on the mission since 2005.

Solar spin fuels chaos

The sun, unlike Earth, spins in a strange, uneven rhythm with its middle rotating faster than its poles. This differential spin winds up the sun’s magnetic field like a twisted rubber band, until it snaps into a reversal, flipping north and south every 11 years in a cosmic reset.

In about five years, the sun will slip into its next quiet phase, known as the solar minimum—a time when its magnetic field settles into order and surface activity calms. Yet despite decades of study, scientists still can’t precisely predict when this cycle will peak again, or how intense the next bout of solar fury will be.

Launched in 2020, the $1.3 billion Solar Orbiter mission captured the images in mid-March. It will continue to orbit around the Sun at a 17-degree tilt angle until December 2026, when its next flight past Venus will tilt its orbit to 24 degrees and in 2029, the spacecraft will rise to an angle of 33 degrees above the planetary plane.