Earth reaches its closest point to the sun — just in time to be slammed by a solar storm

On Jan. 4, Earth will reach its closest point to the sun all year in an annual event called perihelion. The precise distance varies from year to year, but perihelion 2023 will see our planet orbiting 91.4 million miles (147 million kilometers) from the sun — or roughly 3 million miles (4.8 million km) closer than Earth's aphelion, its farthest point from the sun, which will occur on July 6.
Our home star has apparently decided to mark the occasion with a bang. On Jan. 4 and 5, a slow-moving glob of solar particles called a coronal mass ejection (CME) will slam into Earth's magnetic field. The collision is expected to trigger a minor G1-class geomagnetic storm that could briefly frazzle power grids, cause radio blackouts and push colorful auroras much farther south than usual — possibly as far south as Michigan and Maine in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center