The Associate Press has released a video from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory of a flare erupting from the Sun. Solar Flares are sudden brightening of the Sun’s surface. They occur when the strong magnetic field of the Sun (in a yet poorly understood mechanism) accelerates charged particles to near the speed of light. The temperature of this plasma reaches tens of million degrees Kelvin, which emits a plenitude of highly energetic photons (mostly x-rays and UV); these photons are responsible for the disruption to satellites that may happen after intense Solar storms.