BENGALURU: The Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) - the primary scientific payload onboard Aditya-L1 designed and built by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru may have provided solar physicists with a breakthrough in understanding the Sun’s mysterious energy budget.
Aditya-L1 is the first space-based observatory class Indian solar mission to study the Sun launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on September 2, 2023.
The Sun’s surface is about 5500 degrees Centigrade but it’s corona can reach approximately two million degrees Centigrade and can go up to 40 million degrees Centigrade during eruptions.
So, it's natural to expect that the Sun’s temperature should decrease from the surface to the outer layers in its atmosphere.
An active sunspot loses about one Watt Of energy per second per square centimetre, while a typical sunspot covers nearly 30 trillion square centimeters.
BENGALURU: The Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) - the primary scientific payload onboard Aditya-L1 designed and built by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru may have provided solar physicists with a breakthrough in understanding the Sun’s mysterious energy budget.
Aditya-L1 is the first space-based observatory class Indian solar mission to study the Sun launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on September 2, 2023. VELC onboard Aditya-L1 is an internally occulted coronagraph to conduct uninterrupted, simultaneous imaging, spectroscopy, and spectropolarimetry of the Sun's corona from its observation point at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point.
The Sun’s surface is about 5500 degrees Centigrade but it’s corona can reach approximately two million degrees Centigrade and can go up to 40 million degrees Centigrade during eruptions. Why the outer atmosphere is hotter than the surface remains a mystery. Aditya-L1 is helping scientists investigate it.
"The shine of the Sun that we see every day is due to the continuous generation of energy in the interior of the Sun, which is transported outwards. So, it's natural to expect that the Sun’s temperature should decrease from the surface to the outer layers in its atmosphere. But in reality, it is not true. The mechanism behind this solar phenomenon continuously maintains the energy budget in the Sun’s atmosphere despite the occurrence of eruptions like the flares and coronal mass ejections (CME) during which large amounts of energy are released by the Sun,” said Senior Professor, Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) and Principal
Investigator, VELC, Dr R Ramesh. He explained that these transient events, which are explosive in nature, are closely associated with sunspot regions. An active sunspot loses about one Watt Of energy per second per square centimetre, while a typical sunspot covers nearly 30 trillion square centimeters.
