For India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 will be like no other.
It's the first time the observatory – which was placed in orbit last year – will be able to observe our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.
According to scientific data, this occurs roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles changing places.
This period marked by intense activity. It involves our star transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.
Made up of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and can attain a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to traverse the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.
"In the normal or low-activity times, our star emits two to three CMEs a day," explains a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."
Studying CMEs is one of the most important research goals of India's first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to learn about the star at the centre of our planetary system, and two, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space.
Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, orbit.
"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, which are direct evidence that charged particles from our star journey to Earth," the scientist explains.
"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, knock down power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."
With capability to see events in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, measure its heat at the source and watch its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and spacecraft and move them out of harm's way.
There are other space observatories observing our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others regarding watching the corona.
"The instrument has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.
Essentially, the coronagraph functions as an artificial Moon, blocking the solar glare allowing researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon provide only during specific moments.
Moreover, it's unique capable of examining eruptions in visible light, enabling it to measure eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data that show the intensity a CME would be if it headed toward Earth.
To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated to study 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 – the iceberg that sank Titanic weighed much less.
At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale each.
Even though the numbers seem incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.
The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on Earth carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.
"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened during periods 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 assist in work out the countermeasures to be adopted to protect spacecraft in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.
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