What's going on with storms on the sun?

IT HAS BEEN A SEASON OF SKY PAGEANTS. MARCH 24 and 25 saw a lunar eclipse across the Americas, Europe, and North and East Asia. April 8 featured the total solar eclipse in North America.

- JEFFREY KLUGER

And in early May, earthlings were treated to a spectacular light show when a geomagnetic explosion on the sun, known as a coronal mass ejection, produced a colorful display of the aurora borealis, a phenomenon usually limited to the north polar region, but visible this time around as far south as Alabama in the U.S. and at similar latitudes around the world.

Coronal mass ejections produce not just spectacle, but also potentially deadly mischief. When the energy from the sun collides with Earth, it can disrupt satellites, send GPS systems awry, knock power plants offline, and shut down telecommunications.

So what's going on out there, and how can we prepare?