NASA Photographs an Intense Solar Flare from the Sun
NASA said: “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.”
Flares are grouped into five categories — A, B, C, M and then X, the strongest — and then given a number denoting the size of the phenomena
Originating from a sunspot dubbed “AR3006”, the flare released radiation that ionized the top of Earth’s atmosphere, causing a blackout in the shortwave radio band around the Atlantic
Solar flares are triggered by a process called “magnetic reconnection”, in which the geometry of the magnetic field in the Sun’s plasma is altered.