A photo of November 7th shows sharp dark areas in the corona of the Sun. Image captured by the SWA ESA Proba-2 mission. Dark areas are areas of an open magnetic field in the solar corona that emit charged particles in the form of high-speed stellar wind propagating into space.
When the wind reaches the Earth, it can affect the operation of satellites in orbit. I am glad that these are predictable events, because scientists are able to observe holes in the solar disk before high-speed wind reaches the Earth. The future mission of Lagrange ESA will be able to increase our ability to detect these holes and predict the effects of the solar wind.
