![](\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2019\/03\/aurora_australis\/19278095-2-eng-GB\/Aurora_Australis_small.jpg\")
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\nMany people hope to catch a glimpse of these reddish-green swirls of colour floating in the polar skies. Few are as lucky as ESA astronaut Tim Peake, who captured this dazzling display of the aurora Australis from the International Space Station during his mission in 2016.\n<\/p>\n
\nThis stunning display of light splashed across the sky is a product of severe solar wind lashing against Earth\u2019s protective magnetic shield.\n<\/p>\n
\nBut beauty often comes at a price, and the cost of the aurora, popularly known as the Northern or Southern Lights depending on the hemisphere, is constant surveillance of the Sun.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe giver of light and heat and a key enabler of life on our planet, our Sun is also a volatile ball of hot gas 1.3 million times larger than Earth. Though 4.6 billion years old, the Sun keeps on churning, emitting constant streams of electrons, protons and atomic particles, into space.\n<\/p>\n
\nOn its particularly active days, the Sun can throw out a Coronal Mass Ejection or CME, an outburst of colossal clouds of solar plasma that, if colossal enough, could have serious consequences for life on Earth. One such ejection produced a geomagnetic storm powerful enough to cause a nine-hour outage of electricity in Canada in 1989. \n<\/p>\n
\nChanging conditions in space due to solar activity is known as space weather and some days it \u2018rains\u2019 electrons and protons. Geomagnetic storms can affect the vital systems on which our modern societies depend, such as satellites, communication networks or power grids.\n<\/p>\n
\nSo what is ESA doing about space weather?\n<\/p>\n