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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 spacecraft – that entered into space recently – can watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

As per research, this occurs roughly once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees our star transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of fire that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of charged particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out toward various directions, 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 low-activity times, our star launches a few solar eruptions a day," explains a leading scientist. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more each day."

Researching coronal mass ejections is one of the key research goals of India's first solar observatory. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to people, but they do affect life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful displays of a CME include northern lights, which are a clear example that charged particles from our star are travelling to Earth," the scientist explains.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, knock down electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving six million people in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, causing disruption in Sweden and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to observe events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and track 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 observing our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare allowing researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data that show how strong of an eruption if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists worked together to study information obtained from a major solar eruption recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent comparable to millions of tons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons in scale respectively.

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

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions with energy content equal to even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we analyzed happened when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The insights from this will help us developing the countermeasures to implement safeguarding satellites in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.