Aditya-L1: Warum 2026 für Indiens Sonnenmission ein unvergleichliches Jahr sein wird: BBC Report.

It’s the first time the observatory – which was placed in orbit last year – will be able to watch the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to Nasa, it comes roughly every 11 years when the Sun’s magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles swapping positions.

It’s a time of great turbulence. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and is marked by a huge increase in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of fire that blow out of the Sun’s outermost layer called corona.

There are other solar missions watching the Sun, but Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others, including the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory sent jointly by Nasa and Esa (European Space Agency), when it comes to watching the corona.
„Aditya-L1’s coronagraph is the exact size that lets it nearly mimic the Moon, fully covering the Sun’s photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during eclipses and occultations,“ says Prof Ramesh.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, letting it measure a CME’s temperature and heat energy – key clues that show how strong a CME would be if it headed toward Earth, says Prof Ramesh.