The picture comes from the agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation.

Though the radiation can’t pass through the Earth’s atmosphere to physically harm humans on the ground, when intense enough, the flared can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and other communication signals travel.

Solar flares are often cited as one of the many ways that the world could dramatically shift, because a big enough one would act as an EMP and fry many electronics.