ISRO's Aditya-L1 Spacecraft Captures First High-Energy X-ray Glimpse of Solar Flares

• 09 Nov 2023

ISRO's Aditya-L1 spacecraft, equipped with the X-ray spectrometer HEL1OS, has achieved the first high-energy X-ray observation of solar flares during its maiden solar mission.

Key Points

• Solar Flare Observation: ISRO reported that the HEL1OS spectrometer, aboard the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, successfully captured the impulsive phase of solar flares during its initial observation period, starting from around October 29, 2023.
• Solar Flares Overview: A solar flare represents a sudden intensification of the solar atmosphere, resulting in increased emissions across the electromagnetic spectrum, encompassing radio, optical, ultraviolet, soft X-rays, hard X-rays, and gamma-rays.
• HEL1OS Instrument: The High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS) is a hard X-ray spectrometer installed on ISRO's Aditya-L1 Solar Mission.
• It operates within a wide X-ray energy band, covering the range of 10 – 150 keV.
• HEL1OS plays a pivotal role in detecting the early impulsive phase of solar activity, which is essential for understanding and characterizing solar flares.
• Solar Flare Study Challenges: Studying the initial impulsive emission of solar flares is a challenging task due to its multiple spectral components and high time variability.
• The hard X-ray emission above 20 keV is significantly lower than that below 10 keV.
• HEL1OS is designed to address these challenges by employing detectors tailored to different energy ranges, providing high spectral and time resolution measurements.