The U.S. space agency NASA has revealed that it has recently captured images of a strong flare erupting from the surface of the sun.

The agency said that the X-class solar flare from the sun’s surface was the strongest category of sun storm noticed in 2015.

As per experts, solar flares are intense emissions of radiations spewed from the sun’s surface. These flares have the capability to disrupt the global positioning, radio, and satellite signals, but cannot penetrate earth’s atmosphere.

As per the details released by NASA, the rare image of the solar flares were captured on March 11, 2015, and peaked at 16:22 GMT.

On March 11, astronomers witnessed Sun’s X-class solar flare of the year that not only lit up huge area in the lower solar corona, but also triggered radio blackout over large areas of the globe, including much of the Americas, said to amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft.

He said that the ionosphere started to reform after about fifteen minutes when stations began to reappear.

“Active Region 12297 was the site of two M-class flares yesterday and an X2.1 starting today at 1611 UTC (12:11 p.m. ET). AR 12297 is in the southern hemisphere of the Sun”, read a post on SDO’s site.

The first X-class solar flare was classified as an X2.2-class flare. X here denotes the most intense flares, whereas the number provides more information about its strength.

An X2 solar flare would be twice as intense as an X1, and an X3 would be thrice as intense, said experts.

NASA also told that apart from solar flare and the radio black out, the X-flare also created a coronal mass ejection that astronomers will be monitoring considering that it could too be heading in earth’s direction.