India’s solar observation mission Aditya L-1 on June 10 said it captured "dynamic activities" of the Sun observed in May, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a post on X.
May saw a series of solar storms. The strongest solar storm in decades blasted the Earth over the May 18 weekend without causing much damage. Powerful solar flares can trigger a geomagnetic storm, which can throw satellites off their orbits, hampering communication, blacking out the internet and even causing power grids to collapse. Their potential to disrupt life is one of the reasons solar storms are studied so closely. They are also vital to understanding the evolution of our solar system.
Isro said the active region AR13664 on the Sun “erupted several X-class and M-class flares, which were associated with Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) during May 8 and 9. These produced a major geomagnetic storm on May 11, 2024”.
These events in May had caused solar storm on Earth, which lead to the observation of auroras in several parts across the globe, a rare phenomenon.
Events that occurred between May 8 and 9 were captured by SoLEXS and HEL1OS, two remote sensing payloads on Aditya L-1, while ASPEX and MAG recorded the events between May 10-11 during its passage through L1, ISRO said.
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These events were also captured by Aditya-L1’s two remote sensing instruments - the Solar Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) and the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC).
In November, Isro had announced that the High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS), tasked with observing hard X-ray activities from the sun, successfully recorded first high-energy X-ray images of solar flares during its initial observation period on October 29.
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The country’s maiden solar mission reached its destination, the Lagrangian Point (L1) which is 1.5 million km from Earth, on January 6.
The mission, the first Indian space-based observatory to study the Sun, was launched on September 2 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.
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