In the past three days, the sun has released three powerful eruptions, two of which may give us another spectacular display of the northern lights.

The Space Weather Prediction Center (SPWC) at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is forecasting geomagnetic storms from Thursday into Saturday. But there could be even more heading our way.

The sun goes through an 11-year cycle where it goes from being very active to quiet. Currently, we are in a period when it’s very active, with many sunspots.

“What we have been seeing are definitely peaks and waves… and then boom, all of a sudden the sun is is going active again,” said Chris Ratzlaff, a seasoned aurora chaser from Airdrie, Alta.

“Quite literally, boom, when it puts off one of these big explosions.”

These sunspots have complicated magnetic fields that, when entangled, can snap and produce a solar flare. And, very often, it is followed by a coronal mass ejection (CME), a fast-moving burst of charged particles. If Earth is in the way of the CME, it can interact with our magnetic field and produce incredible displays of aurora, which is referred to as a geomagnetic storm.

Solar flares are marked by their strength, from C to M to the most powerful, X.

Geomagnetic storms go from the weakest to strongest on a scale of G1 to G5. There was a G5 storm in May.

On Tuesday, the sun released an X7 solar flare. And just this morning, it released an X9.

As of publication, the SPWC has not issued a geomagnetic storm watch for the X9 flare. But there is a chance that the X9 could catch up to the X7, which increases our chance of a particularly good display of auroras.