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Regarding India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit last year – will be able to watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes approximately every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period of great turbulence. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and can attain a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out in any direction, even toward the Earth. At top speed, it would take an ejection about half a day to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star emits two to three CMEs daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, we expect there will be 10 or more each day."

Researching CMEs is one of the most important research goals of India's first solar observatory. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger systems on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs seldom present immediate danger to people, yet they impact life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, are stationed.

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

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft malfunction, knock down power grids and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event in history was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network failed, affecting six million people without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, causing chaos across Scandinavia and various European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, record its temperature at the source and track its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire of the corona around the clock, 365 days a year, even during solar events," says the researcher.

Essentially, this instrument acts like an artificial Moon, blocking the Sun's bright surface to let researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon does only during eclipses.

Moreover, it's unique capable of examining solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data that show the intensity of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

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

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent was equivalent to millions of tons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Although the numbers seem incredibly large, the expert classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be CMEs with energy content equal to even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what is in store during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The learnings from this will assist in work out protective measures to implement safeguarding satellites in orbit. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.