Spaceweather- dark filament, comet encounter
ONE WEEK TO THE ROSETTA COMET: The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is now less than 1700 km from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In only 7 days, Rosetta will reach the comet's core and go into orbit around it. Latest images from the probe's navigation camera show a strangely-shaped nucleus that is coming into sharper focus day by day. Follow the action @ESA_Rosetta.
DARK FILAMENT ON THE SUN: As the sunspot number rebounds from a deep low in mid-July, the chance of flares is increasing, too. However, the biggest threat for a flare today might not be a sunspot at all. Instead, our attention turns to a long dark filament of magnetism:

Astrophotograher Jack Newton photographed the structure on July 29th from his observatory in Osoyoos, British Columbia. Stretching more than 100,000 km from end to end, and filled with dense plasma, the sinuous filament is held aloft by solar magnetic fields. If it snaps or collapses and hits the stellar surface below, the result could be a Hyder flare--a type of explosion that does not require a sunspot.
NOAA forecasters estimate an increasing 25% chance of M-flares and a small but non-negligible 5% chance of X-flares on July 30th. Solar flare alerts: text, voice