Solar flare captured in incredible Nasa footage

The burst of radiation appear as sudden moments of brightness in the footage

A mid-level flare, an M6.5, erupted from the sun on 2 April, 2014. (NASA/SDO/Goddard Space Flight Center)

Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has released incredible footage of a flare erupting from the sun.

The powerful bursts of radiation appear in the clip as sudden, swirling, bursts of brightness. Captured on 2 April 2014, the flares reached their peak at 15:05 GMT, according to the space agency.

“The image shows the flare in a blend of two wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light: 131 Angstroms and 171 Angstroms, colorized in yellow and red, respectively,” explained Nasa on its website.

The space agency confirmed that the solar flares were classed at M6.5, or mid-level. The strongest flares are labelled X Class, and are 10 times more powerful than Wednesday’s eruption.

The ‘M’ corresponds to the strength of the flare, with an ‘M2’ being twice as intense as an M1, an M3 is three times as intense, according to Nasa.

The agency said that the explosions are not harmful to humans as they cannot penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere.

However, if intense enough, the clouds of electrons, ions and atoms that are shot into the Earth’s atmosphere during solar flares can sometimes disrupt GPS and communications signals, including mobile phone service.

The effects usually take around a day or so to materialise.