NASA captures the explosive moment a brilliant solar flare fired out of the sun

An explosion more than 90 million miles from home was spied by NASA.

NASA's sun-observing Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the moment when a solar flare let loose on Thursday. There is a pair of freshly released GIFs that highlight the eye-catching burst of energy.

The full image is here. The solar flare is hard to miss. When you see the right side of the image, you'll know it.

Via Giphy.

This is the view of the same moment.

Via Giphy.

NASA calls this a "mid-level" flare, with an M5 classification, which speaks to the strength of the space weather event in the context of its impact on Earth. Solar flares like this release a lot of radiation. Our solar system is exposed to radiation at the speed of light. When it's powerful enough, the burst of energy can affect radio waves, electronics, and other Earth-based technologies.

This solar flare event is on the second-lowest measure of the space weather scale. There is a chance that high-frequency radio communications on Earth's sunlit side will be blacked out after a solar flare. It can mess with low-frequency navigation signals for a similar amount of time.

If you don't know anything about the underlying science, it's still cool to look at the images of our distant sun and see a visible eruption of energy. If you want to learn more, spaceweather.gov is a good place to start.