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

It's the first time the observatory – that entered into space recently – will be able to observe the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes approximately every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – 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 frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and reach a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel in any direction, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection 15 hours to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, our star launches a few solar eruptions daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect them to be 10 or more each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the key scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions offer a chance to learn about the star in the center of our solar system, and two, because activities occurring on the solar surface threaten infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

CMEs seldom present immediate danger to people, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, being direct evidence that solar particles from our star are travelling toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

"But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite malfunction, knock down power grids and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event in history occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting six million people in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• In February 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

If we are able to observe what happens on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its trajectory, this serves as advanced warning to switch off electrical systems and spacecraft and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Special Capability

There are other space observatories watching our star, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, even during solar events," notes the expert.

In other words, this instrument acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – a feat the real Moon does only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining eruptions in visible light, letting it measure a CME's temperature and heat energy – key clues that show the intensity a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

To prepare for next year's solar maximum, researchers worked together analyzing information obtained from one of the largest solar eruption recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to millions of tons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale respectively.

Even though these figures seem massive, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.

The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be eruptions carrying power matching greater levels.

"In my view the CME we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what is in store when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he states.

"The insights gained will help us work out protective measures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in orbit. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he concludes.