On Tuesday morning, the sun unleashed an M6.9 solar flare — one of its most forceful expressions — sending a coronal mass ejection drifting toward Earth on a days-long journey through space. By Friday, that cloud of charged particles may brush our magnetosphere, and where conditions allow, the sky could answer with light. It is a reminder that the Earth does not drift through a quiet cosmos, but lives in intimate, turbulent relationship with its star.