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

This marks the initial occasion the observatory – which was placed into space last year – will be able to watch our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

As per research, this occurs roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star emits a few solar eruptions a day," explains a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect there will be over ten each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the key research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections offer a chance to study the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and two, because activities that take place on the solar surface endanger systems on Earth and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs seldom present a direct threat to people, yet they impact life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are a clear example that charged particles from Sun journey to Earth," the expert explains.

"But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite fail, disable electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar event ever recorded was the Carrington Event which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, an ejection caused 38 commercial satellites being lost

If we are able to see events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its path, it can work as a forewarning to shut down power grids and satellites redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

There are other space observatories watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire of the corona around the clock, 365 days a year, including during solar events," notes the researcher.

In other words, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – a feat natural eclipses provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, it's unique capable of examining solar events in visible light, enabling it to measure eruption heat and thermal output – key clues that show how strong a CME would be when traveling our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists collaborated analyzing the data gathered from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale each.

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

The space rock which wiped out prehistoric life on our planet was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using assessing what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he states.

"The insights gained will help us developing the countermeasures to be adopted to protect satellites in orbit. They will also help achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.