A dazzling display of auroras lit up the far northern skies Tuesday night (Jan. 24) in a supercharged light show…The northern lights show was sparked by an intense solar flare that erupted from the sun late Sunday (Jan. 22). The flare unleashed a wave of charged particles, triggering the strongest solar radiation storm since 2005 (- Yahoo! News)

Flickr members Ben-e-boy and Corinne Mills (Ben’s Mom!) caught the aurora over Dundee, Scotland. A local and national paper found their photos through Flickr and contacted them. Corinne was contacted by the local Dundee Evening Telegraph. Ben’s photos were found by the Scottish edition of the Times and after contacting him his photo was on the front page!

Photos from Trigger rigger, Fotoklubben Knäppisarna, PaulCyrPhotography.com, Ben-e-boy, and corinne mills.

Flickr Pro is already without doubt the best deal on the web for uploading and sharing your photos. Unlimited uploads, unlimited storage, access to your super huge original files, stats on your account and no ads. Flickr Pro means that you can take all the photos you like with all your phones, cameras, celluloid lightboxes, microwave ovens, etc. and store your memories all together in one place for $24.95 per year.

Today we’re happy to announce some Pro pricing changes to make it even better:

• For people who would rather pay in smaller increments we’re introducing an option to buy Pro 3 months at a time for $6.95.
• We’re also dropping the price of a 2 year subscription to $44.95 (a savings of $10.95 off the 3 months at a time price).

Lastly, we’re also moving to a subscription model where Pro accounts will automatically renew. When your Pro account is near expiration, you’ll receive a reminder from us before it renews and you’ll of course have the option to cancel at anytime.

We hope these changes will make it even easier for members to enjoy all of the fun of Flickr Pro uninterrupted and for less money.

Note: Pro subscriptions purchased before January 25, 2012 won’t automatically renew. (You will have to pay the old fashioned way using that web order form thing like your Grandpa used to back in 2011.)

For more information please see our Payment FAQs and if you have any questions let us know in the forum.

“A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. “

NASA has uploaded the full 64 Megapixel version to Flickr. Here’s a link to the Large size. From there you can click over to see the 8000×8000 image on Flickr.

Photo and quote from NASA Goddard Photo and Video.

"Svema" used to be the major photographic film manufacturer in the USSR, but their film lost market share in former Soviet countries to imported products during the late 1990s. They made black-and-white photographic film, photographic paper and B&W/colour cine film until 2000. Svema products were known among enthusiasts as an easy and sturdy product for beginners in home film development and printing. – Wikipedia

Many of you – the enthusiasts mentioned in above article – are here on Flickr showcasing your amazing work taken with the many different Svema films that are a part of magnificent analog history.

Photos from mariczka, boxed_137, alex-malex, arthur sakhkalyan, payalnic, sundays and tea, melancholija, nefoto…, Gleb Pereyaslavsky, and levas.

Previous film samplrs: Fuji Superia 200

Every year on 20 January the people of the city of San Sebastián celebrate a festival known as the “Tamborrada”. At midnight, in the Konstituzio Plaza, the mayor raises the flag of San Sebastián. For 24 hours, day and night, the entire city is awash with the sound of drums. The adults, dressed as cooks and soldiers, march in different companies across various parts of the city with different schedules. The celebration finishes at midnight when the city flag is lowered at different spots, while the main meeting point remains the Konstituzio Plaza. – Wikipedia

View more photos of this year’s Tamborrada festival that took place in San Sebastian last Friday.

Photos from zubillaga61, martuteneauzoa, and envisionpublicidad.

Gouda, The Netherlands

Calgary, Canada

Paris, France

Lyon, France

Valladolid, Spain

Gouda, The Netherlands

Yesterday, January 21st, 2012, Sketchcrawlers from all over the world went out to record the day on the 34th World Wide Sketchcrawl. You can see lots more of their beautiful work here on Flickr. If you are interested in joining in the fun head on over to the Sketchcrawl group.

Photos & drawings from borromini bear, dorkboycomics, vvaunat, hervé HUGUES, Félix Tamayo, and fourchet.

laviddichterman was on location during the Capitol Hill Denny Sled run, capturing the action and sharing it with us. So much fun!

The Sinulog is an annual festival held on the third Sunday of January in Cebu City, Philippines. The festival commemorates the Cebuano people’s pagan origin, and their acceptance of Roman Catholicism. The festival features a street parade with participants in bright coloured costumes dancing to the rhythm of drums, trumpets and native gongs. – Wikipedia

For more photos of this years beautiful and colorful Sinulog festival, check out this search.

Photos from junP, I.A.N., Wizard of Wonders™, yujinsomera, detrás de la lente, and allansoul.

Two bills are currently being considered in the U.S. Congress: PIPA the “Protect IP Act” and SOPA the “Stop Online Piracy Act”  Both are designed to address a legitimate problem – foreign-based websites that are engaging in digital piracy and trafficking in counterfeit goods.  Unfortunately, we and many others believe that these bills miss the mark.  These bills have the potential to stifle innovation, require censorship of search results, impose monitoring obligations, and change the way information is distributed on the web.   Government regulation of online activities is a slippery slope and these proposed bills fall down that slope without truly addressing the issues that ignited this debate.

With the pending votes on these bills, Flickr is joining other sites on the web on January 18th to help raise awareness about the potential impacts of this legislation.

If you would like to participate in this awareness campaign, Flickr is letting members darken their photos — or the photos of others — for a 24-hour period to deprive the web of the rich content that makes it thrive.  Your symbolic act will help draw attention to this issue and let others know about the potential harmful impacts of these bills.

A few notes, members can darken 10 photos**. It will only be hidden on the photo page so you can still see it in the Lightbox or slideshow. If you don’t want others to darken your photos, you may choose to opt-out from any photo.

If you are a concerned about these bills we encourage you to learn more at netcoalition.com.

If you are a U.S. Citizen you can also get information on how to contact your representatives in congress at protectinnovation.com.

** Update 9:27am January 18, 2012: We removed the 10 limit, you can darken to your dark heart’s dark desire.

Sometimes, when looking at your friend’s favorites, or recent uploads on Flickr, unusual patterns start to emerge. There can suddenly be a multitude of portraits or landscapes, black & whites, overexposed and underexposed photos, or simply shades of red.

Photos from Lua Corujeira., Lita Bosch, SuperDewa, MauroMille, and Megan Brim.