🔗 Share this article

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

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed into space recently – can watch the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, this occurs approximately every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario could be the North and South poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun changing from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of fire that erupt from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and can attain a speed exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel in any direction, even toward our planet. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection about half a day to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star emits a few solar eruptions a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the key research goals of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, since events occurring on the Sun endanger systems on our planet and in space.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

CMEs seldom present a direct threat to human life, yet they impact life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations of a CME are auroras, being direct evidence that solar particles from Sun are travelling to Earth," the scientist explains.

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

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event in history occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, affecting six million people without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, causing disruption across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

If we are able to see events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, measure its heat at the source and track its path, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and satellites and move them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

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

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher.

Essentially, this instrument acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, letting it measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show the intensity of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

In preparation for the upcoming solar maximum, researchers collaborated to study information obtained from a major solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

It originated on 13 September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale each.

Although these figures seem incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.

The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power equal to greater levels.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated happened when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The insights gained will assist in work out protective measures to be adopted to protect satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he concludes.