Piece of the sun BREAKS off

The moment a piece of the sun’s northern pole breaks off has been captured by NASA in a never-before-seen event that has baffled scientists.

A video shows a giant filament of plasma, or electrified gas, shooting out from the sun, separating and then circulating in a ‘massive polar vortex.’

While astronomers are baffled, they speculate the prominence has something to do with the reversal of the sun’s magnetic field that happens once every solar cycle.

The video was shared on Twitter by space weather forecaster Tamitha Skov, who said the clip was taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

‘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,’ Skov shared in the tweet.

NASA describes solar filaments as clouds of charged particles that float above the sun, tethered to it by magnetic forces.