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Regarding India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed in orbit last year – will be able to observe the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

As per scientific data, it comes approximately every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and is marked by a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes a CME about half a day to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star launches a few solar eruptions daily," explains a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the key scientific objectives of India's maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections offer a chance to learn about the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and secondly, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger systems on Earth and in orbit.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

CMEs seldom present a direct threat to people, yet they impact life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays of a CME are auroras, which are direct evidence that charged particles from Sun are travelling to Earth," the expert explains.

"However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft malfunction, knock down electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event ever recorded occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems across the globe
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, an ejection caused dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability to see what happens on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or solar eruption as it happens, record its temperature at origin and watch its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and satellites redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other solar missions observing our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during solar events," notes the researcher.

In other words, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare to let scientists constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – a feat the real Moon does only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events using optical wavelengths, letting it measure a CME's temperature and heat energy – key clues indicating how strong a CME would be when traveling our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists worked together analyzing the data obtained from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

This event began on 13 September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

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

The asteroid that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth carried enormous energy and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be eruptions carrying power equal to even more than that.

"In my view the CME we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard for future comparison assessing what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The learnings from this will assist in work out the countermeasures to be adopted to protect satellites in near space. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he adds.