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

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – will be able to watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes approximately once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario could be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition 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 from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a CME may have a mass of billions of tons and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km each second. It can travel toward various directions, even toward the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions a day," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect there will be 10 or more daily."

Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important research goals for the Indian first solar observatory. One, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the star in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, since events that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present a direct threat to people, but they do affect our planet by causing magnetic disturbances that impact conditions in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are direct evidence that charged particles from our star are travelling to Earth," the expert clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite fail, knock down electrical networks and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar storm in history occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people in darkness for hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, leading to chaos in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to observe what happens on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, record its temperature at origin and track its path, this serves as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and satellites and move them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other space observatories observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage compared to rivals when it comes to watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic the Moon, fully covering the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during solar events," says the expert.

Essentially, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare to let scientists constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – a feat the real Moon provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data that show how strong of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers worked together to study the data obtained from a major solar eruption recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

It originated in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent comparable to millions of tons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though the numbers seem massive, the expert describes it as a moderate event.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider the CME we evaluated to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using assessing what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The insights from this will help us work out protective measures to implement to protect satellites in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid us gain deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.