🔗 Share this article

Regarding India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 will be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the observatory – which was placed into space recently – will be able to watch the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

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

This period of great turbulence. It involves our star transition from calm to stormy and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can head out in any direction, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, the Sun emits two to three CMEs daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."

Researching CMEs is one of the key scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. One, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the star at the centre of our solar system, and two, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to people, but they do affect life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most beautiful displays of a CME include northern lights, which are a clear example that charged particles from our star journey to Earth," the expert clarifies.

"But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite malfunction, knock down electrical networks and affect weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm in history was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• In 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, leaving six million people without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, causing chaos across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• In February 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to observe what happens in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona around the clock, 365 days a year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

Essentially, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare allowing scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and heat energy – crucial data that show how strong of an eruption when traveling our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers worked together to study the data gathered from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

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

Although these figures make it sound incredibly large, the expert describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider the CME we evaluated happened during periods of typical solar activity. This establishes the standard that we'll be using assessing what is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says.

"The learnings from this will help us developing protective measures to implement to protect spacecraft in near space. They will also help us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he concludes.