NASA's sun flare video gave a captivating glimpse of holiday lights-like spectacle up in the sky. The gigantic solar flare was documented late Friday afternoon, Dec. 19 and a photo was released by the space agency on Dec. 22. The occurrence was caught by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
The Active Region2242, an extremely active area of the sun, has erupted in a massive sun flare late Friday afternoon, which was captured by NASA in a video. According to the space agency, it was one of the most intense solar flares possible that it even cause power outages on Earth, Science Times reported.
When NASA repositioned its Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array or NuSTAR, it produced the most captivating solar flare ever taken in high-energy X-rays. The Daily Mail reported that the NuSTAR, one of NASA's most powerful telescopes, is primarily designed to look at black holes and other objects far from our solar system.
"NuSTAR will give us a unique look at the sun, from the deepest to the highest parts of its atmosphere," a solar physicist and member of the NuSTAR team at University of California, Santa Cruz, David Smith said.
With NuSTAR's high energy view, solar scientists said that it has the potential to capture theorized Nano flares, which are smaller versions of the gigantic sun flares that was similar to what was captured on a video by NASA last Friday, which erupted with charged particles and high-energy radiation. If the Nano flares exist, it may explain why the sun's outer atmosphere known as corona is sizzling hot, a mystery called the "coronal heating problem."
Since NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory noticed the massive sun flare, it has kept a close and constant watch on it and even recorded a video of the astronomic phenomenon. According to the International Business Times, the solar flare last Friday afternoon was so powerful that is caused power outages in several parts of the Earth, particularly in South Pacific and Australia.
Solar experts said the region is vast and complex, and more power outages could happen. According to Capital Berg, the sun flare that was captured on a video by NASA, was a part of an active week of sun storms. A week ago, one more active sunspot area had made two moderate-sized flares.
According to NASA, the less intense sun storms come under the category of Class M, while the stronger ones comparable to the one noticed on Friday are categorized as Class X. M-class flares are around a 10th 0f the size of X-class flares, however they can make spectacular displays of the Northern Lights. With more M-class flares expected this weekend, people in a selected areas may get an enthralling holiday lights salvo from geomagnetic storms activated by the flares.
In line with NASA's sun flare video, a solar flare is a gigantic energy release that can be as powerful as 160 trillion megatons of TNT. In comparison, the destructive Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was just about three megatons. So, just imagine what 160 trillion megatons can be like.
