Last week, many were treated to a dazzling display of auroras thanks to strong solar activity. This week, the Earth is likely to be impacted by even more solar activity, without the aerial color show.

Over the weekend, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) issued a geomagnetic storm watch for Monday and Tuesday, saying a “high speed stream from a coronal hole is expected to influence the Earth” on both days.

SWPC projected the arrival for Monday morning and shared an image of the sun revealing a coronal hole.

The darker appearance in the image signifies a cooler and less dense area than the surrounding plasma, identified as a coronal hole by NOAA, The Hill reported.

These areas, classified as “unipolar magnetic fields,” enable solar wind to release into space more easily.

As per Rob Steenburgh from NOAA’s Space Weather Forecast office, such occurrences are frequent, and events like coronal holes and their associated solar winds can lead to geomagnetic storms, as cautioned by SWPC for the current week.

Written by B.C. Begley