SUIT onboard Aditya-L1 captures details of solar flares

In a historic first, the Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) onboard Aditya-L1 has succeeded in capturing unprecedented details of solar flares.

- Dheeraj Bengrut

PUNE: SUIT is a unique space telescope developed by the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) Pune, and launched by ISRO whereas Aditya-L1 is India's first dedicated solar space mission.

SUIT has succeeded in capturing a solar flare 'kernel' in the lower solar atmosphere, namely the photosphere and the chromosphere in images recorded in the near-ultraviolet (NUV) band. This ground-breaking observation marks a leap in the understanding of explosive activities in the solar atmosphere.

The pioneering research is led by Ph.D. student Soumya Roy under the guidance of professor Durgesh Tripathi and professor A N Ramaprakash at the IUCAA Pune. The research team includes other experts from IUCAA; Manipal Academy for Higher Education (MAHE); UR Rao Satellite Centre/ISRO; Centre for Excellence in Space Science India (IISER Kolkata); Max-Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany; Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Thiruvananthapuram; and the SOLEXS team from UR Rao Satellite Centre/ISRO. The findings have been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, one of the world's leading astrophysics journals.

SUIT observed an X6.3-class solar flare on February 22, 2024, one of the most intense categories of solar eruptions. The uniqueness of this discovery lies in the fact that SUIT detected brightening in the near ultraviolet wavelength range (200-400 nm) (see figure 1). The Sun's full disk has never been imaged in this entire wavelength range in such detail.

These observations provide new insights into these huge eruptions in the solar atmosphere and highlight the complex physical processes involved in the transfer of mass and energy through different layers of the solar atmosphere.