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Regarding India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed in orbit last year – can watch our star during its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, this occurs approximately once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario could be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun changing from calm to stormy and is marked by a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

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 per second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward the Earth. At top speed, it would take an ejection 15 hours to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions a day," says a leading scientist. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be over ten each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the key scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, since events that take place on the Sun threaten infrastructure on our planet and in space.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most beautiful displays of a CME include northern lights, being a clear example that charged particles from our star journey to Earth," the scientist clarifies.

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

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar event in history was the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems across the globe
• In 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, causing chaos in Sweden and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to see events in the solar atmosphere and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at the source and watch its path, this serves as a forewarning to switch off power grids and spacecraft and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

While other space observatories watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others when it comes to watching the corona.

"The instrument is the exact size that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, even during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.

Essentially, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare allowing researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – something the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining solar events using optical wavelengths, letting it measure a CME's temperature and heat energy – crucial data that show how strong a CME would be when traveling our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's solar maximum, researchers collaborated analyzing the data obtained from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 during early hours. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship 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 – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons each.

Even though the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the expert describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be eruptions carrying power matching greater levels.

"In my view this eruption we analyzed happened during periods of typical solar activity. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The learnings from this will help us developing the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in near space. They will also help achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.