Dramatic Solar Flare Frozen In Time By Nasa

Nasa scientists have captured images of a dramatic solar flare - a massive release of energy from the Sun.

A solar flare is a sudden brightening observed over the Sun's surface.

The amount released is about a sixth of the total energy output of the Sun each second - or 160 billion megatons of TNT.

The flare ejects clouds of electrons, ions and atoms through the corona of the Sun into space.

These clouds typically reach Earth a day or two after the event.

The Sun released another flare on July 6, which caused a radio blackout.

It was labelled as an R3 on the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administrations scale that goes from R1 to R5.

Such blackouts can cause disruption to both high and low-level radio frequencies.

The flare also caused what is know as a solar energetic particle event, caused by fast particles from the Sun travelling behind the flare and impacting Earth's magnetosphere.

The magnetosphere also underwent a minor geomagnetic storm on the evening of July 6 in response to relatively slow coronal mass ejections that have erupted from other regions on the Sun since July 4.

The most recent solar flare took place on Thursday and was captured by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Images and videos were taken in a variety of wavelengths - 131 being seen as a teal colour, 335 in blue, 171 in yellow and finally a combined wavelength view.

All the images were captured by the observatory's AIA instrument.

Meanwhile, astronomers have found a fifth moon orbiting far-away Pluto.

Nasa said the irregular-shaped moon, which has been nicknamed S/2012 for now, is about six to 15 miles across.

Last year, astronomers reported finding the fourth moon around the icy dwarf planet some three billion miles away.

"The moons form a series of neatly nested orbits, a bit like Russian dolls," said Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is 648 miles across. The other two, Nix and Hydra, are between 20 and 70 miles in diameter.

Hubble - a potent space telescope that has transformed the field of astronomy since it was first launched in 1990 - discovered Nix and Hydra in 2005.

Astronomers at the US Naval Observatory glimpsed Charon in 1978.

Pluto, once known as the ninth planet from the Sun, was declassified as a full-fledged planet in August 2006 and joined the new category of dwarf planet.

At about 1,430 miles wide, it is about two-thirds the size of the Moon and has a mass less than 1% of the Earth's.