NASA shares photo of first solar flare of 2015

The sun is starting the New Year in a big way with NASA sharing a photo of the first big solar flare of 2015.

The image was taken Monday night, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, and shows the flare erupting from the sun at 11:24 p.m. EST.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation from the sun's surface, according to NASA.

While radiation from the flare can't pass through Earth's atmosphere to effect people, when "intense enough they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel," NASA reports.

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