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Regarding India's first solar observatory, 2026 will be like no other.

It's the first time the observatory – that entered in orbit recently – will be able to watch the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes roughly every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves our star transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the number of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of charged particles, a CME may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed of up to 3,000km each second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward the Earth. At top speed, it would take a CME 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star launches two to three CMEs a day," says an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated there will be 10 or more each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and two, because activities occurring on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect life on Earth by causing geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in near space, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful displays from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that solar particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the expert explains.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, disable power grids and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar event ever recorded was the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out communication systems across the globe
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network failed, affecting six million people without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, causing disruption across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to observe events in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, record its temperature at the source and watch its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to switch off power grids and satellites and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

While other space observatories watching our star, Aditya-L1 has an advantage compared to rivals regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona around the clock, 365 days a year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.

In other words, this instrument acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

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

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, researchers collaborated to study information obtained from one of the largest solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship weighed much less.

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of explosives – in comparison nuclear weapons used in Japan were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons each.

Even though these figures seem massive, the expert classifies it as a moderate event.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using assessing what is in store during solar maximum arrives," he states.

"The learnings from this will help us developing protective measures to be adopted to protect satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid us gain a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.