NASA On Air: NASA Spacecraft Observes Solar Flare (3/13/2014)

  • Released Thursday, March 13, 2014
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LEAD: What is a X-class solar flare? It is one of the most intense categories of massive bursts of light from the sun.

  1. This flare erupted on Tuesday, January 7, 2014.

  2. For scale, the dark-colored sun spot is huge...about twice the size of Earth.

  3. NASA’s SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) spacecraft, launched in 2010, studies the sun’s magnetic fields.

  4. Flares are related to the reconnection, or short-circuiting, of magnetic loops

TAG: Though not a threat to humans, SOME solar flares can disrupt GPS and communication signals.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Thursday, March 13, 2014.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:51 PM EDT.