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

This marks the initial occasion the observatory – that entered in orbit last year – will be able to watch our star when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

As per research, this occurs roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun changing from calm to stormy and is marked by a significant rise in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km each second. It can head out in any direction, including towards our planet. At top speed, the journey takes a CME about half a day to cover the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, our star launches two to three CMEs daily," explains a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the key research goals of India's first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to study the Sun in the center of our solar system, and two, since events occurring on the solar surface threaten systems on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections seldom present a direct threat to human life, but they do affect our planet through generating magnetic disturbances that impact conditions in near space, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that charged particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics on a satellite fail, disable electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event in history was the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, affecting millions in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos in Sweden and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to see events on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or solar eruption as it happens, record its temperature at origin and track its path, it can work as advanced warning to shut down electrical systems and spacecraft and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other solar missions watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

Essentially, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface allowing researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and thermal output – key clues that show how strong of an eruption if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated to study information obtained from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons in scale each.

Although the numbers make it sound massive, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The learnings from this will help us developing the countermeasures to implement to protect spacecraft in near space. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.