ISRO’s Aditya-L1 spacecraft’s two onboard instruments capture solar fury

ISRO‘s Aditya-L1 spacecraft‘s two onboard remote sensing instruments have captured the recent solar fury, the space agency said on Monday. India’s maiden solar mission Aditya-L1 reached the Lagrangian point (L1) on January six this year, 127 days after it was launched on September two, 2023. L1 is located roughly 1.5 million km from Earth and enables the spacecraft to view the Sun continuously. The Solar Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) and the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) have captured the dynamic activities of the Sun during May 2024, ISRO said in a statement.

“Several X-class and M-class flares, associated with Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), leading to significant geomagnetic storms, were recorded,” it said.

The Active region AR13664 on the Sun, during its passage during the week of May 8-15, erupted several X-class and M-class flares, which were associated with CMEs during May 8 and 9. These produced a major geomagnetic storm on May 11, it was stated.

ISRO released the Sun images acquired by the SUIT payload on May 17, and also shared details of the observations made by VELC.