The sun emitted a significant solar flare, peaking at 12:22 EDT on March 11, 2015. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured an image of the event. 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 flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more inf

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Keywords: flare, goddard, nasa, sdo, sun