SUIT Telescope on board Aditya-L1 observes Solar Flare, rare plasma ejection in UV light
Chennai, May 14 (UNI) ISRO on Wednesday announced that the Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) onboard Aditya-L1 Mission observed powerful SolarFlare and a first of its kind Rare Plasma ejection in Ultra-Violet Light.
On December 31, 2023, the Aditya-L1 mission witnessed the Sun unleashing an enormous solar flare (an X-class solar flare) that hurled a glowing plasma 'blob' off the sun.
Cameras aboard the SUIT payload of Aditya-L1 watched the rare ejection of plasma blob move from a leisurely 300 km per second speed to a blistering speed of 1500 km per second- with this speed one can circle the entire earth in half a minute.
This was for the first time; such an eruption is caught in near-ultraviolet light which offers scientist
a new class of data sets to understand solar phenomena more deeply, ISRO said, in an update.
Solar Flares are highly energetic explosions in the solar atmosphere. These are characterized as sudden, intense bursts of energy caused by the release of magnetic energy.
During solar flares, a huge amount of radiation is emitted and energetic particles are ejected. These both impact the space weather and geo-space environment, including effects such as disruption in radio communication, power grid disturbances, satellite damage, risk to astronauts and flights etc.
Considering the importance of solar flares for technology that is of day to day use, it is of paramount importance to develop a comprehensive understanding of their origin, evolution and properties, with the final aim of being able to predict them substantially in advance so that provisions may be made
to shield communication satellites, power grids etc.
Noting that Solar flares radiate across the complete electromagnetic spectrum, the Indian Space AGency said however, due to sparsity of observations in other wavelengths, they are primarily studied in the X-rays and extreme-ultraviolet, which are towards the higher energy of the electromagnetic spectrum, and to some extent in radio.
However, very little is known about their properties in the Near Ultra-violet (NUV) and visible.
To develop a comprehensive understanding of flares, it is necessary to, as a first step, develop the complete spectral energy distribution in flares, which can then be complemented with theoretical models, thereby helping us to derive mechanisms of flare and associated radiation.
One of the science goals of the SUIT is to study solar flares in NUV wavelength range of 200-400 nanometers, using 11 different filters. The filters are carefully chosen in such a way that it covers
the lower (photosphere) and middle (chromosphere) atmosphere of the Sun.
"Such observations have never been made before. Therefore, these observations, for the first time, provide the inputs regarding flare radiation which has been missing to date", it said.
The Aditya-L1 spacecraft was precisely launched into its intended orbit by PSLV C 57 launch vehicle of ISRO on September 2, 2023. After a series of complex Earth-bound maneuvers, the spacecraft was successfully placed in a large halo orbit around first Sun-Earth Lagrange Point (L1) on January 6, 2024.
The first images from SUIT instrument were taken on December 6, 2023. Since then SUIT has gone through and successfully completed the verification and calibration process. From October 2024, SUIT is making regular science observations.
The observation presented from 31st December, 2023 is from the initial cruise phase before L1 insertion of Aditya-L1 spacecraft.
On the eve of the new year 2024 an X-class flare erupted at the east limb of the sun from the active region NOAA 13536 and peaked at 21:55 UT.
The flare was also associated with a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) which exhibited a very high velocity 2852 km/s.
The flare consisted of two eruptions. During the cruise phase, the onboard flare detection module
was not turned on, and the flare was observed only in the Mg II h (280.3 nm, NB04) channel. SUIT observed a plasma blob getting ejected from the flaring region, which subsequently gets accelerated across the SUIT field of view.
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