Sun Emits Mid-Level Flare on October 2, 2014
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- Visualizations by:
- Tom Bridgman
- View full credits
The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 3:01 p.m. EDT on Oct. 2, 2014. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun 24-hours a day, captured images of the flare. 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.
This flare is classified as an M7.3 flare. M-class flares are one-tenth as powerful as the most powerful flares, which are designated X-class flares.
Video of flare and eruption in several wavelengths. It begins with 304 angstrom, then 171, and finally a blend of 304, 171 and 131, which shows the hottest flaring regions.
Music: "No Comment Before Sunset" by Lars Leonhard, courtesy of the artist and BineMusic.
Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
For complete transcript, click here.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
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Animator
- Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.) [Lead]
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Writer
- Karen Fox (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
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Video editor
- Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Producer
- Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Tapes
This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:-
2014 Heliophysics Breaking News
(ID: 2014015)
Tuesday, December 30, 2014 at 5:00AM
Produced by - Robert Crippen
Datasets used in this visualization
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SDO
ID: 168This dataset can be found at: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/
See all pages that use this dataset -
SDO AIA 304 (304 Filter)
ID: 677This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset -
SDO AIA 171 (171 Filter)
ID: 680This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset -
SDO AIA 131 (131 Filter)
ID: 730This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.