The Sun starts 2015 with a mysterious huge coronal hole on it's solar surface.

There were no fireworks on the sun to welcome in the New Year - and in fact, scientists say the end of the year was relatively quiet on the solar surface.

However, the sun has started 2015 with a mysterious event - a huge hole has appeared. Known as a coronal hole, the phenomenon occurred near the south pole - and is seen as a dark area covered all of its base.

The incredible image was  captured on Jan. 1, 2015 by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows the coronal hole as a dark region in the south.

Coronal holes are regions of the corona where the magnetic field reaches out into space rather than looping back down onto the surface.

Particles moving along those magnetic fields can leave the sun rather than being trapped near the surface. Those trapped particles can heat up and glow, giving us the lovely AIA images. In the parts of the corona where the particles leave the sun, the glow is much dimmer and the coronal hole looks dark.

Coronal holes were first seen in images taken by astronauts on board NASA's Skylab space station in 1973 and 1974.

They can be seen for a long time, although the exact shape changes all the time. The polar coronal hole can remain visible for five years or longer. Each time a coronal hole rotates by the Earth we can measure the particles flowing out of the hole as a high-speed stream, another source of space weather.

Earlier this year, Ashley Dale, who is a member of an international task force, dubbed Solarmax, warned that solar 'super-storms' pose a 'catastrophic' and 'long-lasting' threat to life on Earth. A solar superstorm occurs when a CME of sufficient magnitude tears into the Earth's surrounding magnetic field and rips it apart.

Such an event could induce huge surges of electrical currents in the ground and in overhead transmission lines, causing widespread power outages and severely damaging critical electrical components.

Mr Dale, carrying out doctoral research in aerospace engineering at Bristol University, said it is only a 'matter of time' before an exceptionally violent solar storm is propelled towards Earth.

He says such a storm would wreak havoc with communication systems and power supplies, crippling vital services such as transport, sanitation and medicine.

Without power, people would struggle to fuel their cars at petrol stations, get money from cash dispensers or pay online,' he said.

'Water and sewage systems would be affected too, meaning that health epidemics in urbanised areas would quickly take a grip, with diseases we thought we had left behind centuries ago soon returning.'

Mr Dale says these types of events are not just a threat, but inevitable.

Nasa scientists have predicted that the Earth is in the path of a Carrington-level event every 150 years on average.

This means that we are currently five years overdue - and that the likelihood of one occurring in the next decade is as high as 12 per cent.

To watch the spectacular video and read more: click here

Credit: NASA