🔗 Share this article

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

This marks the initial occasion the observatory – that entered into space last year – will be able to watch our star during the peak of its solar cycle.

As per scientific data, this occurs approximately every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period of great turbulence. It sees our star changing from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km each second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME 15 hours to traverse the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star emits two to three CMEs a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."

Researching CMEs is one of the most important scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to learn about the star in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, since events that take place on the Sun threaten infrastructure on Earth and in orbit.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

CMEs seldom present a direct threat to human life, but they do affect our planet by causing magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in near space, where about 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most beautiful displays from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are direct evidence that solar particles from our star journey to Earth," the expert explains.

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, knock down electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar storm in history was the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting millions in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, leading to disruption across Scandinavia and various European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection caused dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability to observe events in the solar atmosphere and detect a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its path, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and satellites and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other solar missions watching our star, Aditya-L1 holds an edge compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking 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," says the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as an artificial Moon, blocking the Sun's bright surface allowing scientists continuously observe 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, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and heat energy – crucial data indicating the intensity of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists collaborated to study information gathered from one of the largest solar eruption recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – for comparison that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale respectively.

Even though these figures seem incredibly large, the expert classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see CMEs with energy content matching greater levels.

"In my view this eruption we analyzed happened when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what to expect when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he says.

"The insights gained will assist in work out protective measures to implement to protect satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.