In the final hours of Christmas Day, the sun fired off four solar flares within less than three hours. The biggest flare of the series, recorded at a M7.3, erupted from sunspot region AR3938 on ...

or the slightly nicer sounding ‘solar fireworks’, as the European Space Agency (ESA) put it. The blue circles in the video are the solar flares (Picture: ESA) These flares become more powerful ...