NASA released a video of a solar flare that occurred in April 2016 that the space agency described as ‘stunning.’
Around 8:30 p.m. EDT on April 17, 2016, an active region on the sun’s right side released a mid-level solar flare, which can be seen in this video as a colorful and bright flash of light.
The video was captured in several wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, a type of light that is typically invisible to our eyes, but is color-coded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory for easy viewing.
Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however – when intense enough – they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center stated that “moderate radio blackouts were observed” during the peak of the flare.
This flare was classified as an M6.7 class flare. M-class flares are a tenth the size of the most intense flares, the X-class flares. The number provides more information about its strength. An M2 is twice as intense as an M1, an M3 is three times as intense, etc.
This flare came from an area of complex magnetic activity on the sun – known as an active region, and in this case labeled Active Region 2529 – which has sported a large dark spot, called a sunspot, over the past several days. This sunspot has changed shape and size as it slowly made its way across the sun’s face over the past week and half. For much of that time, it was big enough to be visible from the ground without magnification and is currently large enough that almost five Earths could fit inside.
The sunspot rotated out of our view over the right side of the sun on April 20, 2016. Scientists study such sunspots in order to better understand what causes them to sometimes erupt with solar flares.
Video and image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
