Cosmically speaking, New Year's Eve is a purely arbitrary event - but it turns out Earth wasn't the only place that saw fireworks on 31 December.
According to a video released by Nasa, two massive solar flares erupted from the surface of the Sun just before the new year.
The spectacular explosions, spotted by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, sent waves of radiation out into the solar system.
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But don't worry too much - there's no chance of a late apocalypse arriving to spoil 2013 before it gets a chance to get going. Such flares - known technically as coronal mass ejections - are actually fairly common, and while they can cause problems with some radio transmissions they almost always pass virtually unnoticed outside of the lab.