Washington: The US space agency NASA has released a new, yet high quality video of a solar flare, an event that is normally outside the visible range for humans, to the public.
The spectacular video, which can be seen in this movie as a bright flash of light, was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on April 17, 2016 when an active region on the sun’s right side released a mid-level solar flare.
Video credit: NASA Goddard/YouTube
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, wrote NASA officials in a video description.
The SDO spacecraft, which observes the sun constantly to help scientists understand what causes eruptions like these, recorded video of the event in several wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light.
(Source: NASA)
