ISRO captures the signatures of the solar eruptive events from Earth, Sun-Earth L1 Point, and the Moon. File photo
India’s first solar observatory Aditya-L1, along with six U.S. satellites, in a major breakthrough, has revealed why the May 2024 solar storm also known as Gannon’s storm behaved so unusually.
In May 2024, the Earth faced the strongest solar storm in more than two decades, which disturbed Earth’s environment severely.
The solar storm is composed of a series of giant explosions on the Sun, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
A CME is like a massive bubble of hot gas and magnetic energy thrown out from the Sun into space. When these bubbles hit Earth, they can shake our planet’s magnetic shield and cause serious trouble for satellites, communication systems, GPS, and even power grids.
A team of Indian scientists in a new study have explained why this storm behaved so unusually.
According to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), during the May 2024 solar storm, scientists discovered something unusual: the Sun’s magnetic fields, which are like twisted ropes inside a solar storm, were breaking and rejoining within the storm.
“Usually, a CME carries a twisted “magnetic rope” that interacts with Earth’s magnetic shield as it approaches Earth. But this time, two CMEs collided in space and squeezed each other so firmly that the magnetic field lines inside one of them snapped and rejoined in new ways, a process called magnetic reconnection,” ISRO said.
It added that this sudden reversal of the magnetic field made the storm’s impact much stronger than expected.
Satellites also detected particles suddenly speeding up, indicating an increase in their energy, confirming the magnetic reconnection event.
“At the heart of this discovery is India’s first solar observatory, Aditya-L1, which joined forces with six U.S. satellites (NASA’s Wind, ACE, THEMIS-C, STEREO-A, MMS, and NASA-NOAA joint mission DSCOVR),” the space agency said.
It added that for the first time, researchers could study the same extreme solar storm from multiple vantage points in space.
“Thanks to precise magnetic field measurements from India’s Aditya-L1 mission, scientists were able to map this reconnection region. They found that the area where the CME’s magnetic field was tearing and reconnecting was enormous — about 1.3 million km across, i.e., nearly 100 times the size of Earth. It was the first time such a giant magnetic breakup and rejoining had ever been seen inside a CME,” it added.
This discovery is expected to enhance the understanding of how solar storms evolve as they travel from the Sun to Earth.
Published – December 09, 2025 08:17 pm IST
