Two Significant Solar Flares Imaged by NASA's SDO The Sun just emitted two significant solar flares on the morning of Sept. 6, 2017. The first peaked at 5:10 a.m. EDT and the second, larger flare, peaked at 8:02 a.m. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, run by NASA Sun Science, watches the Sun constantly and captured images of both events. 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,

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory released breathtaking close-up footage of solar flares, revealing the Sun as a complex network of blazing plasma loops and turbulent magnetic fields. The new video captures dark filaments cutting across bright, twisting arcs as massive bursts of energy erupt and constantly reshape in real time. To appreciate the scale: the Sun spans about 1.39 million kilometres in diameter, roughly 109 times the size of Earth. What may appear as tiny sparks in the footage are a