Watch stunning footage of a solar flare
Looking for some spectacular bursts of radiation to go with your morning coffee? You're in luck.
NASA has released some stunning video footage of a recent solar flare eruption.
The midlevel solar flare erupted on April 2. The footage, released by NASA over the weekend, was captured by the space agency's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
According to NASA, the video shows the flare "in a blend of two wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light: 304 Angstroms and 171 Angstroms, colorized in yellow and red, respectively."
The M-class flare, with an intensity rating of 6.5, is about six-and-a-half times stronger than the an M1 flare, but not the strongest. That would be an X-class flare, the weakest of which is 10 times stronger than an M1.
But earthlings need not worry: Radiation from solar flares, even the strongest ones, cannot penetrate Earth’s atmosphere and are not harmful to humans, NASA said. But "they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel."
