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

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – will be able to watch our star during its maximum activity cycle.

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

It's a time marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of fire that erupt from the solar corona.

Composed of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME about half a day to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star launches a few solar eruptions daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be 10 or more each day."

Researching CMEs is one of the key scientific objectives of India's first solar observatory. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun threaten infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions are auroras, which are direct evidence that charged particles from Sun journey to Earth," the expert clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, disable electrical networks and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar event in history was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, causing disruption across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to see what happens in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, record its temperature at origin and watch its path, it can work as a forewarning to shut down power grids and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other space observatories watching the Sun, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others when it comes to watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, blocking the Sun's bright surface allowing scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues indicating the intensity of an eruption when traveling toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists worked together to study information gathered from one of the largest solar eruption recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – for comparison that sank Titanic weighed much less.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller in scale respectively.

Even though the numbers make it sound massive, the expert classifies it as a moderate event.

The asteroid which wiped out prehistoric life on our planet was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs carrying power matching greater levels.

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

"The insights from this will assist in work out protective measures to implement to protect satellites in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.