At www.spaceweather.com (April 12th 2017) Comet PanSTARRS has become highly active. Last week the comet brightened six fold- now amateur astronomers are photographing an incredible tail (see below) …12th 2017) Comet PanSTARRS has become highly active. Last week the comet brightened six fold- now amateur astronomers are photographing an incredible tail (see below) …
… the tail spans 8 million kilometres. A lot of dust and gas (including water) is being blown into space. It's closest approach to Earth will be on the 19th (next week).
Meanwhile, this weekend, a huge CME event that exploded on the Sun a couple of days ago will pass by the Earth, not without inflicting a glancing blow on our atmosphere.