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

It's the first time the spacecraft – that entered in orbit last year – will be able to observe the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, this occurs approximately 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 sees the Sun changing from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the number of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out in any direction, even toward our planet. At top speed, it would take an ejection about half a day to cover the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, the Sun emits two to three CMEs a day," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be 10 or more each day."

Researching CMEs ranks among the most important research goals of India's first solar observatory. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the Sun endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to people, yet they impact our planet by causing magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

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

"However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft fail, disable power grids and affect weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, affecting six million people in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disturbed air traffic control, causing chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability to see events in the solar atmosphere and spot solar activity or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at the source and watch its path, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories observing our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during solar events," notes the researcher.

Essentially, this instrument acts like a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study solar events in visible light, enabling it to determine eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data that show how strong a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's solar maximum, scientists worked together analyzing information gathered from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale each.

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

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions carrying power equal to greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened during periods of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard for future comparison to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says.

"The insights from this will help us work out protective measures to implement to protect spacecraft in near space. Additionally, they'll aid us gain deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.