Chennai: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) which is gearing up for its first Solar exploratory mission to study the dynamic sun with the planned Aditya-L1 satellite using PSLV in the coming days, said the study of the sun was to know about stars in various other galaxies.
ISRO said the sun is the nearest star and therefore can be studied in much more detail as compared to other stars.
“By studying the sun we can learn much more about stars in our Milky Way as well as about stars in various other galaxies”, it said.
“The sun is a very dynamic star that extends much beyond what we see. It shows several eruptive phenomena and releases immense amount of energy in the solar system. If such explosive solar phenomena is directed towards the earth, it could cause various types of disturbances in the near earth space environment”, it said.
It said various spacecraft and communication systems are prone to such disturbances and therefore an early warning of such events is important for taking corrective measures beforehand. In addition to these, if an astronaut is directly exposed to such explosive phenomena, he/she would be in danger. The various thermal and magnetic phenomena on the sun are of extreme nature.
Thus, the sun also provides a good natural laboratory to understand thosephenomena which could not be directly studied in the lab.