The Sun is still very much alive and kicking: It emitted two extremely powerful bursts of radiation today — a pair of X-class solar flares within about an hour of each other. You can see both of them in this video from NASA's Solar Dynamics Laboratory. The X-class designation is reserved for the most powerful of solar flares. Here is another view showing the entire Sun.
And here's a really cool still image, also from the SDO spacecraft:
An X-class flare erupts from the sun on June 10, 2014, as imaged by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. (Source: NASA) The colors are different in the videos and the image above because each views the sun in different wavelengths. Do these flares pose a risk to us Earthlings? As NASA put it on the Solar Dynamics Observatory Facebook page this morning:
Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere ...
