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For India's first solar observatory, 2026 will be like no other.

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed in orbit last year – can watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

As per research, it comes roughly every 11 years when 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 our star transition from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the number of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection about half a day to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, our star emits a few solar eruptions daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Studying CMEs ranks among the most important research goals for the Indian first solar observatory. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to learn about the star at the centre of our solar system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger systems on Earth and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect our planet through generating geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most beautiful manifestations of a CME are auroras, which are direct evidence that solar particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the expert explains.

"However, they may cause electronic systems on a satellite fail, knock down power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded was the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting millions without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disturbed air traffic control, leading to chaos in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

If we are able to observe events in the solar atmosphere and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at the source and track its path, this serves as advanced warning to shut down power grids and spacecraft redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

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

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the Sun's bright surface allowing researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study solar events in visible light, letting it determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data indicating the intensity a CME would be if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated analyzing the data gathered from a major solar eruption recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

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

Although the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated the dinosaurs on Earth carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power equal to even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we analyzed to have occurred during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The learnings gained will assist in work out protective measures to implement to protect spacecraft in orbit. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.