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Regarding India's first solar observatory, 2026 is expected to be like no other.

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

According to scientific data, it comes roughly 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 involves our star changing from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection about half a day to cover the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or low-activity times, our star emits a few solar eruptions a day," says a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be over ten each day."

Studying CMEs is one of the key research goals of India's maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the Sun threaten infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections seldom present a direct threat to people, but they do affect life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are a clear example that solar particles from our star journey toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

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

Past Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar event ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting six million people in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona 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 to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other solar missions watching the Sun, India's spacecraft holds an edge compared to rivals regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument is the exact size that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during solar events," notes the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, blocking the solar glare allowing scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated analyzing the data gathered from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

It originated 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, its temperature reached extreme levels and the energy content was equivalent to millions of tons of TNT – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons each.

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

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard for future comparison assessing what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The learnings from this will assist in work out protective measures to be adopted safeguarding satellites in orbit. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.