NASA has revealed stunning footage of a solar flare in action.
The US space agency posted the clip to its popular Instagram account and it’s racked up almost 1 million like.
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Nasa captioned its post: “The Sun emitted a mid-level solar flare this morning, peaking at around 1:01 am EST (06:01 UTC). Our Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which observes the sun constantly, captured these images of the event.”
The solar flare in question happened on January 20.
Nasa continued: “Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy. They usually take place in active regions, which are areas on the Sun marked by the strong presence of magnetic fields.
“As these magnetic fields evolve, they can reach a point of instability and release energy in many forms, including electromagnetic radiation, which is what is observed as solar flares.
“Flares and solar eruptions can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to spacecrafts and astronauts.”
The Sun is currently at the start of a new 11 year solar cycle, which usually sees eruptions and flares grow more intense and extreme.
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Sometimes solar flares result in a solar storm on Earth.
That happens when solar wind hits the Earth’s magnetic field.
Each solar storm that hits Earth is graded by severity.
The experts at SpaceWeather.com think we should get a “glancing blow” from one on January 22 or 23rd.
It’s only likely to cause a pretty natural light display like the Northern Lights then any disruptions to the power grid.
The Earth’s magnetic field helps to protect us from the more extreme consequences of solar flares.
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In other news, China has built an ‘artificial moon’ to train its astronauts for future missions.
A huge asteroid was captured in eerie footage as it shot past Earth this week.
And, here’s why pilots think 5G could be ‘catastrophic’ for airplanes.
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