NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captures image of mid-class solar flare

Credits: NASA/SDO

Washington: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured an image of a mid-class solar flare on Monday.

The mid-sized flare, emitted by the sun, peaking at 10:58 a.m. EDT on September 28, 2015, was imaged by the Solar Dynamics Observatory.

The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extraordinarily hot material in flares and which is typically colorized in red.

Solar flares are powerful outbursts of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun lasting from minutes to hours.

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.

Researchers have classified the September 28 flare as an M7.6 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.

Solar flares are classified based on their brightness in the X-ray wavelengths.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory is a NASA spacecraft launched in 2010, and since then it has been observing the Sun constantly.