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

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – 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 polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario could be the planet's poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and is marked by a significant rise in the number of solar storms and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km each second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to cover the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

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

Researching CMEs ranks among the key scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. One, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on our planet and in space.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present a direct threat to people, yet they impact our planet through generating magnetic disturbances that impact conditions in Earth's vicinity, where nearly 11,000 satellites, comprising many from India, orbit.

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

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite fail, disable power grids and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar event ever recorded was the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid failed, affecting millions without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, causing chaos across Scandinavia and various European air hubs
• In February 2022, an ejection caused 38 commercial satellites being lost

If we are able to observe events in the solar atmosphere and spot solar activity or solar eruption as it happens, record its temperature at origin and watch its trajectory, it can work as advanced warning to shut down power grids and spacecraft redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other space observatories watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk permitting continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, even during solar events," notes the expert.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let researchers constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – a feat natural eclipses provide only during eclipses.

Moreover, it's unique capable of examining solar events in visible light, letting it determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

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

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

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons each.

Even though the numbers seem massive, the scientist classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs with energy content matching even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark for future comparison assessing what is in store when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he states.

"The insights from this will assist in developing the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding satellites in near space. They will also help us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he concludes.