Usually when we huddle near a fire, we feel warm and as we move away, that warmth is reduced. But surprisingly the sun and its atmosphere don’t follow this rule. Made up of a soup of positively charged protons, negatively charged electrons and other ions mixed with the solar magnetic field, extending somewhere between 10 and 20 solar radii from the surface of the Sun, the solar corona, the atmosphere of the Sun is an enigma. While the surface of the Sun is 5,600 degrees, the corona, interestingly, is about two million degrees. “We have some idea of why it is so, but the problem is not fully resolved,” says Dipankar Banerjee, Director of Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES). “Observations from Adtiya L1 will help us understand the dynamics of the Sun and how solar variability impacts the climate on Earth and affects the space weather,” he adds.
Monitoring the Sun
Discovered by mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange, L1 is one of the five points located approximately 1.5 million kilometres away, where the gravitational forces of the Sun and the Earth are in equilibrium. Hence, a spacecraft placed at L1 orbits the Sun at the same rate as Earth and affords an uninterrupted view of the Sun, making it an ideal observation post for space-based solar observatories.
