🔗 Share this article

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

This marks the initial occasion the observatory – that entered in orbit recently – will be able to watch the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

As per scientific data, this occurs approximately every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario would be the North and South poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees our star changing from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the number of solar storms and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km each second. It can head out in any direction, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME about half a day to cover the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, the Sun emits two to three CMEs daily," says an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, we expect there will be 10 or more each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the key scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to people, but they do affect life on Earth by causing geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in near space, where about 11,000 satellites, including 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.

"However, they may make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, knock down power grids and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm in history was the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting six million people in darkness for hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to see events in the solar atmosphere and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at origin and watch its path, it can work as advanced warning to shut down power grids and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Special Capability

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

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during solar events," says the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare allowing researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions using optical wavelengths, letting it determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues indicating how strong a CME would be if it headed toward Earth.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's solar maximum, scientists collaborated to study the data gathered from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated in September 2024 during early hours. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison 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 TNT – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though the numbers seem incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be CMEs with energy content matching even more than that.

"I consider the CME we analyzed happened during periods of typical solar activity. This establishes the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he states.

"The insights from this will assist in work out protective measures to implement safeguarding satellites in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he adds.