But it's getting better . It's really hard to reconstruct what is happening in between. There are three major types of solar storms. All three happen most often during the peak of the sun's 11-year cycle. One type of event is a solar-radiation storm.
Radiation storms can maim astronauts and damage satellites.
This occurs when the sun shoots bubbles of hot, magnetized gas at us, jolting Earth's magnetic field and wreaking havoc with power grids and Earth-satellite communications. These events also cause the spectacular aurorae, also known as the northern and southern lights. The current equipment for forecasting space weather consists mostly of two satellites that are gravitationally held at a place in the line between the sun and Earth, though much closer to Earth. Their basic problem is that although they can measure very well what's going on directly around them, that doesn't tell us much until the storm is almost here, explained Richard Canfield, a research professor at Montana State University at Bozeman. But they can't even tell simple things like, is the ejection headed toward us or away from us.