On Saturday April 20 of this year, two sunspots suddenly formed in the sun’s northern hemisphere. The sunspots were given the names AR1726 and AR1727. No one knows if they will erupt or flare - that remains to be seen. Also unknown is whether the spots will be pointing toward Earth when or if that happens.

This near and next the sun will be spurting all manner of plasma. Sunspots are bursting forth in solar flares and coronal mass ejections every few days. A few of them have shot straight at the Earth, though none have proved to be stronger than a medium-class flare and are not dangerous.

Although they don’t tend to do much damage, they do make the aurora borealis really brilliant. The most recent spectacular one to delight us occurred on April 11th. It was an M-Class flare of around a magnitude of 6.5 that jolted the Northern Lights. It was the strongest solar flare and CME this year so far, NASA said.

“AR1726 is the fastest-growing and, so far, the most active. It is crackling with C-class flares and seems capable of producing even stronger M-class eruptions. Because of the sunspot's central location on the solar disk, any explosions this weekend will be Earth-directed. Stay tuned,” according to Spaceweather.com.

Below is what happened after just such a sunspot erupted and ignited the aurora borealis on March 17, 2013. It was photographed by Göran Strand from Östersund, Sweden. The aurora resulting from the CME’s hit onto Earth’s magnetic field and was captured with an all-sky camera.