The event was captured by NASA telescopes in orbit

Apr 3, 2014 09:46 GMT  ·  By

Astronomers operating the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) were able to image an M-class solar flare that was released by the Sun on Wednesday, April 2, 2014. The medium-intensity event comes just a few days after a much more significant, X-class flare was released on Saturday, March 29.

The new flare peaked at around 10:05 am EDT (1405 GMT) yesterday, but no official advisories have yet been released by experts with the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This organization issues warnings if too much radiation is released during solar flare or coronal mass ejection (CME) events.

When a solar flare develops, vast amounts of radiations and highly-charged particles are emitted in the solar system. Sometimes, the active regions (AR) generating these flares point towards Earth, which means that the radiations and particle clouds will impact our atmosphere, potentially damaging satellites in orbit, the International Space Station, or power grids on the surface.

Yesterday's event was classified as an M6.5 flare. For comparison, the more dangerous X-class solar flares are at least 10 times more powerful and intense than M-class events. Additionally, an M6 flare is six times more intense than an M1 event. The same type of classification applies for X-class events, too.