🔗 Share this article

For Aditya-L1, 2026 will be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the observatory – which was placed in orbit recently – can observe the Sun when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

According to research, it comes roughly every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees our star transition from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the number of solar storms and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, our star emits a few solar eruptions daily," explains a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be over ten each day."

Researching CMEs is one of the most important scientific objectives of India's maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to learn about the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, because activities that take place on the solar surface threaten infrastructure on Earth and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to people, but they do affect our planet by causing magnetic disturbances that impact conditions in near space, where about 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most beautiful displays from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are a clear example that solar particles from our star are travelling to Earth," the scientist explains.

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, disable electrical networks and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event in history occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network failed, affecting six million people without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed air traffic control, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to observe events on the Sun's corona and spot a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at origin and track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and spacecraft and move them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other solar missions observing our star, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

Essentially, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare allowing scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – a feat the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining eruptions using optical wavelengths, letting it determine eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show how strong of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated to study information gathered from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

This event began on 13 September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of explosives – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

Although the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard for future comparison to evaluate what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he states.

"The learnings gained will help us developing protective measures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he concludes.