LAURENT GILLIERON / EPA IMAGES
Here’s what’s going on to cause more widespread northern and southern lights.
NASA
Solar storms can play havoc with electrical grids, satellites and railway lines.
Typical amounts of solar particles hitting the Earth’s magnetosphere can be beautiful, but too much could be catastrophic.
Svein-Magne Tunli - tunliweb.no/Wikimedia
Every few centuries the Sun blasts the Earth with a huge amount of high-energy particles. If it were to happen today, it would wreak havoc on technology.
The Sun occasionally ejects large amounts of energy and particles into space that can smash into Earth.
NASA/GSFC/SDO via WikimediaCommons
Space weather can affect satellites in a number of different ways, from frying electronics to increasing drag in the atmosphere.
New research confirms how particles from space can be sent careening down into Earth’s atmosphere to create the aurora, filling in a missing piece in how this stunning natural phenomenon is generated.
Terry Zaperach/NASA
The sun has entered a phase causing more chances to see the northern lights in the UK, an expert explains.
The Earth has a powerful magnetic field.
NASA
A strange patch of extremely strong magnetic field occurred over Jordan in 1000BC. Could we be about to face another one?
A huge solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun on Sept. 6, 2017. A separate image of the Earth provides scale.
NASA/GSFC/SDO
At a time in the sun’s cycle when space weather experts expect less solar activity, our star is going bonkers with solar flares and coronal mass ejections. What effects will Earth feel?
Stranded sperm whale in the Netherlands.
REMKO DE WAAL/EPA
Space weather can impact life on Earth.
When the sun flares, space weather is on its way to Earth.
NASA/SDO
Our power grid infrastructure on Earth is more vulnerable to space weather than previously thought – with susceptibility in more regions and even during quiet geomagnetic periods.
Ain’t half hot: but where’s it heading?
Naeblys
Astrophysicists found out after the January 2014 solar flare that their predictions of solar weather were not very accurate. Here’s the fix (kind of).