Solar Magnetic Poles: First Shots from Beyond the Equator express
The Sun is not just a ball — it's a magnetic mansion. Its invisible force lines, like electrical wiring, thread through space and control space weather. But until now, we've only seen this wiring from the landing — the plane of Earth's orbit. The attic and basement, the magnetic poles, remained a mystery.
In 2025, the Solar Orbiter probe, like an electrician with a multimeter, sneaked into these invisible floors. Its instrument split the light into colorful bands to reveal magnetic patterns. And here's the surprise: the north and south poles turned out to have different architectures. Their magnetic flows aren't just dissimilar — they change out of sync: when one gains strength, the other weakens, and this dance accelerates month by month.
This attic find is the key to the 11-year rhythm of solar pole flips. By understanding how the wiring 'flickers' above and below, we can more precisely calculate when a magnetic storm will strike Earth's power grids.
Original abstract
as written by the authors arXiv:2512.03611
Direct remote-sensing observations of the solar poles have been hindered by the restricted view obtained from the ecliptic plane. For the first time ever, Solar Orbiter with its remote-sensing instruments observed the poles of the Sun from out of the ecliptic in the Spring of 2025. Here we report the first measurements of the magnetic field of the solar poles taken when Solar Orbiter was at heliographic latitudes ranging between 14.9$$^\circ$$ and 16.7$$^\circ$$. The data-sets were collected by the High Resolution Telescope of the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (SO/PHI-HRT) on board Solar Orbiter. Two sets of observations, approximately one month apart, for the south and north pole are considered in this work. The magnetic flux and flux density measured during these campaigns are reported as a function of the heliographic latitude observed by SO/PHI-HRT. The net fluxes show a different latitudinal distribution for the two polar caps. We also discuss the observed dependence of the measured fluxes on the viewing angle. These first results highlight the importance of high-resolution direct measurements of the polar field, paving the way to the high-latitude observations planned for SO/PHI-HRT in the coming years.
Every 11 years, the Sun's magnetic poles swap places, like a house where the attic and basement change roles. The last time this happened was in 2013.