There has been a torrent of solar physics data lately, largely thanks to new spacecraft that have begun actively observing the Sun. One of those spacecraft, Solar Orbiter, happened to have a serendipitous encounter with a type of solar physics phenomenon known as a “switchback”. A new paper, available in Nature Astronomy from researcher Jesse T. Coburn and their co-authors, describes how that serendipitous encounter allowed them to track the switchback back to its birthplace in the solar corona for the first time.

Switchbacks are important in our understanding of solar physics because of how they tie into the solar wind - the supersonic stream of charged particles that consistently blows from the surface of the Sun out into space.…