Solar flare poses no risk to earth

The flare peaked early Tuesday and created a large cloud that appeared to cover almost half the surface of the sun, Nasa said.

A cloud of charged particles erupted from the sun’s outer atmosphere and is expected to pass by earth, causing a minor disruption to earth’s magnetic field, according to the National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Centre in Boulder, Colorado.

“This wasn’t really such a big event,” said Michael Hesse, chief of the space weather laboratory at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Md.

“It was spectacular to watch, but not big in terms of hazards to the earth.”