BOULDER, USA, Oct. 10, 2026 - The Sun has been unusually busy. An M1.1 solar flare erupted on 5 October,^[1] followed by a powerful eruption on 6 October that forecasters said could bring storms and auroras on 9 October.^[2] A coronal mass ejection linked to an M1.4 flare raised the prospect of a G2 geomagnetic storm and auroras over the United States and Canada on 8 and 9 October,^[3] and a moderate G2 storm was forecast to reach Earth on 9 October.^[4] On 10 October an interplanetary shockwave struck Earth's magnetic field,^[5] and NOAA issued a G2 storm watch, noting that strong G3 conditions were also possible.^[6] NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center also recorded an M5-level X-ray flare at 15:07 UTC that day.^[7] The effects reached far from the poles. Auroras were seen as far south as Kent and Devon in England,^[8] across the UK on Friday and Saturday evenings,^[9] and over the Czech Republic on 10 October.^[10] Much of the activity came from sunspot region AR4549.^[11] Impact Insight. Solar flares are graded A, B, C, M and X, each step ten times stronger than the last, and a coronal mass ejection that hits Earth can trigger a geomagnetic storm rated from G1, minor, to G5, extreme. Space weather is part of keeping near-Earth space safe: strong storms disturb satellites and GPS and increase drag on spacecraft in low orbit, which shifts their paths and makes everything in orbit harder to track.