They aren’t uncommon persey, it’s just another form of solar prominance, or material lifted above the surface by magnetic field liness. However, the tornado-like appearance rather than a full arc of material that connects to the surface in 2 places is rather uncommon, and it’s even possible that it’s an artifact of the way the sun is photographed (the lenses filter based on temperature, essentially, and material further from the surface may cool to the point it doesn’t get picked up with any of the filters, making it effectively invisible), or the angle at which the photos are taken in relation to the prominence (if we are looking at it head on, we wouldn’t see the second anchor point).

How they form is an ongoing mystery with many models, like all solar prominences, and it probably isn’t disconnected on one end like a cyclone would be, but visually it resembles a tornado, and the material does rotate around the magnetic field lines, much the same way a tornado rotates in air. We see the same rotation in more typical coronal loops, which are what cause coronal mass ejections when one end or the other releases. They are absolutely massive when they do form, 10+ stacked earths in size, and can last days, weeks, months.

It’s one of my go-to water-testing facts because almost everyone likes the sun, is at least vaguely familiar with tornadoes, and can envision a “10 earth tall tornado of plasma on the sun”. Which is a damned cool image to envision - the reality is also spectacular but a bit less so.

The one linked below is actually from March this year, which is neat! I didn’t even know it happened again! This one was 14 earths high and exploded at the end of its cycle! How cool! I hope they got some really good data on how it works! I’ll have to do some looking :)

businessinsider.com/nasa-video-solar-tornado-plas…