Solar Fallout From Sun Eruption Crashes Into Earth

A powerful solar explosion slammed into Earth's magnetic field late Tuesday night, ramping up the Northern Lights across parts of Canada and the United States.

The sun storm erupted Monday, sending a huge cloud of charged particles streaking into space at incredible speeds. That cloud — known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME — hit Earth's magnetic field at around 10 p.m. on Tuesday, researchers said. NASA released a video of the sun eruption on Monday, before closing down for the current government shutdown.

"G2 (moderate) levels of storming were observed overnight as a result," officials with the Space Weather Prediction Center, a service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote in an update Wednesday. "Earth remains under the influence of this CME, so there is likely still more to come." Read more...