🔗 Share this article

For India's first solar observatory, 2026 is expected to be like no other.

It's the first time the observatory – that entered in orbit last year – can watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

As per research, it comes approximately every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun changing from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the number of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma 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 reach a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME about half a day to cover the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, 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."

Studying CMEs is one of the most important research goals for the Indian first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to people, yet they impact life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations of a CME are auroras, being direct evidence that charged particles from our star are travelling to Earth," the expert clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, disable electrical networks and affect weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar storm in history occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems across the globe
• In 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, causing disruption across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption in real time, record its temperature at origin and watch its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and satellites and move them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

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

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during solar events," notes the expert.

In other words, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let scientists constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining eruptions in visible light, enabling it to measure a CME's temperature and heat energy – crucial data indicating the intensity of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers worked together to study the data gathered from one of the largest solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

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

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale each.

Although the numbers seem massive, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions carrying power matching greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated to have occurred during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard for future comparison 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. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.