Hi Ginger. We can study the Sun's poles somewhat from the side, but it would be nice if we could get a more direct view of them. The Ulysses spacecraft does not have imaging instruments, but has sampled the solar wind over the poles. There are a few missions that have been suggested that might help with the imagining aspect. One of these would be the Solar Orbiter mission, which would not go over the poles, but would get out of the plane in which the Earth orbits, so we could image it better. It would not go directly over the pole, though. That is still in the planning stages. We are not entirely sure why there don't seem to be spots at the poles. Observations of other stars (which are very hard to make!) suggest that cooler stars than the sun (small red stars) are more active than the Sun and do have spots at the poles. Terry