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For India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 is expected to be like no other.

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed into space last year – can watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

As per research, it comes approximately every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles changing places.

It's a time of great turbulence. It involves the Sun changing from peaceful to violent and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that erupt from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and reach velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel in any direction, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME about half a day to cover the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star launches a few solar eruptions daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be over ten daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the most important research goals of India's maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun threaten systems on Earth and in space.

Effects on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, yet they impact our planet by causing geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that charged particles from Sun are travelling to Earth," the scientist explains.

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

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar event in history was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems across the globe
• In 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting millions without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, causing chaos across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• In February 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to observe what happens on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its trajectory, it can work as advanced warning to shut down power grids and spacecraft and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

There are other space observatories observing our star, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher.

Essentially, this instrument acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – a feat natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study solar events in visible light, letting it determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues that show how strong a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's solar maximum, scientists worked together analyzing the data gathered from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

It originated on 13 September 2024 during early hours. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to millions of tons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though these figures seem incredibly large, the expert classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The learnings from this will assist in developing protective measures to be adopted to protect satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.