ISRO's Aurora Masti

If you have been to May 10, 11 on Twitter and Instagram

then you must have seen that all these western people from

America and Europe are posting pictures of Aurora that they

saw Aurora, this and that

Now of course, Indians will feel jealous

It feels like these cool events like Eclipse or Aurora are

being seen by them only

This simulation guy of this world is very racist

But anyways, even though we didn't get to experience it

here in India we have 3 friends who definitely experienced

it and they are Aditya L1, Chandrayaan 2 and XpoSat

ISRO has published a very in-depth blog on how their

satellites were affected and how some of them were badly

affected and what all the spacecraft observed that day

This Aurora happened because there was a huge solar storm

The sun released a lot of energy towards us which affected

the atmosphere

This came from a few sunspots of the sun which were named

AR13664

AR means active region

These sunspots

CME came out from here

CME means coronal mass ejection

The literal part of corona is ejected towards you and when

this happens chances of geomagnetic storm on earth increase

because a lot of material comes towards earth interacts

with our magnetic field and causes chaos in the upper

atmosphere

Since our magnetic field is made it affects the poles more

that's why it is seen more by Europeans and the upper

regions of North America if something like this happens the

simulation guy is not racist but when this happens the

effect is on the whole

world and our spacecraft our radios we are also getting

affected

I have made a video on how sun is predicted if you want to

know more link will be in the description

The video on your screen you can see the active region

This video is from NASA's SDO

Solar Dynamics Observatory

You might ask why didn't I bring a video from Aditya

I will address that topic in this video what is going on

with Aditya

Anyways our ground systems were on like Udaipur's Udaipur

Solar Observatory or USO it observed and the peak on your

screen is of USO

I will link it in the description if you want to see the

data

I have a bitter sweet mostly negative memory

Udaipur Solar Observatory is very beautiful and unique

because it is in the middle of a lake 6-7 years ago we went

for a conference and I wanted to see this telescope because

it is so unique and I took this picture it has a big

advantage of being in the

middle of water the atmosphere around it is less turbulent

because water cools down the red air hence the telescope

performance is improving

I was trying to take a tour of this for a video

I wanted to make a video

I took a picture took mails, phone calls but it was not

approved

I felt bad that day

I left the channel but negative memory associated with this

telescope if you ever go to Udaipur do check this video it

was not the only ground facility that was observing this

event a lot was going on first of all NARL

National Atmospheric Research Laboratory it is ISRO's own

lab located in Andhra Pradesh it noticed changes in the

ionosphere let me tell you about ionosphere ionosphere is a

region in the earth's atmosphere it extends for 60-90 km

ionosphere is called

ionosphere because there are a lot of free ions and

electrons these free ions and electrons are here because

the strong radiation from the sun is stripping the gas and

it is releasing ions and electrons so it becomes a dense

region layers like DEF do

not go in this region basically different layers reflect

different types of radio that's all you need to know

ionosphere is an important part of our communications a lot

of antennas use ionosphere as a mirror they fire on it and

it reflects and goes to

the other side if there is no direct line of sight so it is

important to monitor it but there is another reason and

that is reverse the satellites above it send signals to the

earth it will go through it what can happen since there are

ions and radio

they may interact and it may delay the signal if there is a

TV signal it will not matter nano or microsecond difference

but if there is a GPS signal or GNSS like GPS or NAVIC if

there is a nano or microsecond difference in their signal

the precision of

your location will be affected or you cannot take the risk

imagine you are in a wartime scenario you are firing a

missile your missile is reliant on GPS it will hit

somewhere else even if you are in peacetime and the

submarine is trying to lock the location

it will lock somewhere else and there are a lot of things

that are dependent on GPS our devices correct the

ionosphere but when there is a major event there can be

major corrections hence it is important to monitor it it is

important for civilization

all major agencies do it

ISRO does it they noticed that TEC total electron count is

declining there are a lot of GNSS systems like NAVIC it

sends signals in 2 frequencies each frequency is affected

by the ionosphere you can find out the value of these 2

frequencies to know what

is going on in the ionosphere in Andhra Pradesh

TEC is declining total electron count is declining and

there are a lot of variations but just down south in Thumba

which is the birthplace of ISRO

ISRO noticed a 100% increase this is interesting because

Thumba is a special location it is close to the geomagnetic

equator one is physical equator and the other is

geomagnetic equator which is around magnetic field lines

around geomagnetic equator there

is ionospheric ring current which is like a flow of ions so

they noticed a huge increase in geomagnetic equator which

is interesting these are the ground systems what did the

space agency do? show the images there are 2 imaging

instruments one is velci

and the other is soot dedicated videos are made on both

what happened? so far there is a PV phase performance

validation phase every experiment is going through

performance validation velci has nothing to show but if

there was a video of velci it would

look like this this is not velci, this is soho you can see

a lot of material coming towards you this is called

coronagraph when you block the sun normally when you see

CME you will see fire coming out but when it comes towards

you nothing will come your

ring will suddenly become bright this is called halo and

this is called halo CME the images of soot were also of

initial light but they have recently uploaded a video you

can see it is off center other experiments are being

validated thats why they have

oriented the spacecraft other experiments have also

recorded this aspects of solar wind has seen rise of alpha

particles and photons solexes is a soft x-ray measurement

instrument has seen multiple x class flares these flares

come from the sun they have

different classes

C class, M class, X class

X is the highest energy but X class can be very dangerous

for spacecrafts of course aditya was made for it but

talking about earth there is a long stick on top of it you

might have seen it on aditya its a magnetometer it has seen

drastic changes you can

see it in the graph when this event happened in the

surrounding environment apart from aditya there is

chandrayaan 2 chandrayaan 2 is orbiting around the moon

there are some solar instruments like XSM

Xray solar monitor its an interesting device that can

measure x-ray flares they have made a dashboard on the

website which is semi live one day old data if i change the

date range from 9 to 12 you can see many x class flares on

the right you can see xm

is labelled if you watch my videos i have made a video on

how ISRO mapped sodium on the moon in that case they were

using x rays on chandrayaan 2 its a class instrument it

also measured increase in x ray fluorescence what is x ray

fluorescence i have

explained it inspect payload also collected data i am

working on a detailed video on how to understand exposet

give me some time

ISRO had some negative effects on some satellites cartosat

2f it's decay which is 30-40m loss it lost 180m

US 07 had the biggest effect it's orbit was 300m many

satellites had minor effects like 100m you can see the graph

ISRO also mentioned it did not affect the satellite services

I hope you liked it

I know it was technical but it was fun special thanks to

Karthikeya Deewal

Bhutla Chaitanya

Jaim Sharma

Rohit Chauran

Taniya Nandini Nandini Nandini