Solar gazing | Mint

Saturday saw the blast-off of India’s solar observatory Aditya-L1. In about four months, it is expected to reach its destination 1.5 million km from the earth, Lagrange Point 1. This is not too Icarian, as the Sun is 100 times the distance away. It’s cool enough for lenses to survive. It also makes a good vantage point, as the mutual gravity of the earth and the sun will hold it “in place”, at least in the sense of orbiting the bright orb alongside our planet at the same pace, keeping its fuel bills low. Once in place, our new orbiter will study the solar corona (outer part), photosphere (sun’s surface), chromosphere (a plasma layer in between), etc., to better understand solar flares and other events that can impact earthly weather and risk damaging other satellites in orbit. Advance alerts of radiation bursts, for example, could permit mitigative action. Moreover, with “thermal geo-engineering” now seen as more than just a last-resort or long-shot response to climate change, the more we know about the sun’s behaviour, the better it will be for everyone. Science gave us the industrial emissions that threaten us. It may yet offer us new ways to tackle today’s crisis of global warming.