The sun shot out a pair of gigantic solar flares early Friday — the second one even bigger than the first, a NOAA expert tells the Los Angeles Times. An X1-class solar flare occurred at about 1 a.m. PDT, followed by an even larger one about eight hours later.
via Pocket http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-x2-solar-flare-20131025,0,1156680.story