THE Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) captured signatures of the recent solar eruptive events from Earth, Sun-Earth L1 Point, and the Moon. ISRO mobilised all its observation platforms and systems to record the signatures of the powerful solar storm that impacted Earth on Saturday. Both Aditya-L1 and Chandrayaan-2 have made observations and signatures have been analysed. The X-ray payloads on-board Aditya-L1 (SoLEXS and HEL1OS) have observed the multiple X- and M-class flares from these regions during the last few days while the in-situ magnetometer (MAG) payload has also observed the events as it passed by the L1 point. While the Aditya-L1 observes the Sun from the first Sun-Earth Lagrange point, the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter has also captured the signatures of these solar eruptive events from the lunar polar orbit. XSM has observed many interesting phenomena associated with this geomagnetic storm.

 

The large solar flares (> M5 class), manifested as spikes, are autonomously identified by the onboard logic of XSM, when the internal mechanism was activated to reduce the incident X-ray flux by bringing a filter in front of the detector, so as to prevent its saturation. While the XSM primarily monitors solar X-rays, it has also provided information about the local high energy particle environment by means of counting the events when the upper level discriminator (ULD) threshold is crossed. A powerful solar storm impacted Earth in early May 2024, triggered by the highly active region AR13664. This region unleashed a series of X-class flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) directed at Earth. The resulting geomagnetic storm was the most intense since 2003 (Dst index -412 nT), causing disruptions to communication and GPS systems. This is the biggest Geomagnetic storm since 2003 in terms of its strength, as the flaring region on the Sun was as big as the historically important Carrington event that took place in 1859. Multiple X-class flares and CMEs have hit the earth in the past few days.