🔗 Share this article

Regarding India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 will be like no other.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit recently – can watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

As per research, it comes roughly every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario would be the North and South poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun changing from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel in any direction, even toward the Earth. At top speed, it would take an ejection about half a day to cover the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, we expect them to be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the key research goals of India's first solar observatory. Firstly, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, since events occurring on the solar surface threaten systems on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present a direct threat to people, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in near space, where nearly 11,000 satellites, comprising many from India, are stationed.

"The most beautiful manifestations of a CME include northern lights, which are a clear example that solar particles from our star are travelling toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite fail, knock down electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm in history occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• In 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, causing disruption in Sweden and various European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to see events on the Sun's corona and spot a solar storm or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at origin and track its path, it can work as advanced warning to shut down power grids and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories observing our star, Aditya-L1 holds an edge compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let researchers constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions in visible light, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and heat energy – key clues that show the intensity a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers worked together analyzing information gathered from a major solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons each.

Even though the numbers seem incredibly large, the expert describes it as a moderate event.

The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on Earth carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions with energy content matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he states.

"The learnings from this will help us work out the countermeasures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in orbit. They will also help achieving a better understanding of near-Earth space," he concludes.