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

It's the first time the observatory – that entered into space recently – will be able to watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

According to scientific data, this occurs approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun changing from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel in any direction, including towards the Earth. At top speed, it would take a CME 15 hours to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the key scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and two, since events occurring on the solar surface endanger systems on Earth and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to people, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, comprising Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations of a CME 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 power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, leaving millions in darkness for hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disrupted air traffic control, causing chaos across Scandinavia and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused 38 commercial satellites being lost

If we are able to observe what happens on the Sun's corona and detect solar activity or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at the source and watch its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and satellites redirecting them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories observing our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals when it comes to watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

In other words, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something the real Moon does only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study solar events in visible light, letting it determine eruption heat and thermal output – crucial data that show the intensity a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

In preparation for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists collaborated analyzing information gathered from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

It originated on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship weighed much less.

At origin, its temperature reached extreme levels with energy equivalent was equivalent to millions of tons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though these figures seem massive, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs with energy content matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we analyzed to have occurred during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark for future comparison assessing what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he states.

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