M-FLARE: Today at 1318 UT, Earth-orbiting satellites detected an M1-class solar flare (SDO movie). The source is a new sunspot emerging over the sun's northeastern limb.

RE-THINKING AN ALIEN WORLD: A distant super-Earth named "55 Cancri e" is wetter and weirder than astronomers thought possible. The discovery has researchers re-thinking the nature of alien worlds. [full story] [video]

CORONAL HOLE: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is monitoring a dark gash in the sun's atmosphere--a coronal hole. It's the dark vertical feature in this extreme UV image taken on Jan. 13th:

Coronal holes are places where the sun's magnetic field opens up and allows the solar wind to escape. This yawning hole is about 120,000 km wide and more than a million km long. Solar wind flowing from its UV-dark abyss will reach Earth on Jan. 16th or 17th, possibly sparking auroras for high-latitude sky watchers.