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

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed into space recently – will be able to watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

According to scientific data, this occurs approximately once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees our star changing from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel in any direction, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star emits a few solar eruptions daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect them to be over ten daily."

Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the key research goals of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions offer a chance to learn about the star in the center of our solar system, and two, since events occurring on the Sun threaten infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present a direct threat to people, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in near space, where about 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations of a CME include northern lights, which are a clear example that solar particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the scientist explains.

"But they can also make all the electronics on a satellite fail, knock down power grids and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event in history was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving millions in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disturbed air traffic control, causing disruption across Scandinavia and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to observe events in the solar atmosphere and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and track its path, this serves as advanced warning to switch off electrical systems and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Special Capability

There are other space observatories watching our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events in visible light, letting it determine a CME's temperature and heat energy – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, researchers collaborated to study information obtained from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent comparable to millions of tons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons 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 carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions with energy content equal to greater levels.

"I consider the CME we evaluated to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The insights from this will assist in developing the countermeasures to implement to protect satellites in near space. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.