Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, February 16, 2019.

The sky was partly cloudy with moderate winds which provided average to poor seeing and transparency at the time these images were taken.

The Sun remains in its spotless and inactive state as generally very low solar activity has persisted over the past 48 hours. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0.  Few quiescent prominences, including a loop prominence at the northwestern limb, as well as plages and an elongated filament at the eastern part of the Sun’s disk associated with the former recurring active region AR2733 were distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to remain at very low levels with chances of weak X-ray fluxes or flares ranging up to B-class intensity.  Close monitoring is being conducted by numerous space weather agencies for any significant development.

Equipment used are Skywatcher 120mm refractor telescope with Baader filter and unmodified Canon EOS 1D Mark IV DSLR camera for visible imagery and Lunt H-alpha solar telescope and ZWO120MM CMOS camera for H-alpha imagery, mounted on Skywatcher EQ6 Pro. Pre-processing of visible solar images was performed in PIPP, stacking in Autostakkert, slight wavelet adjustments in Registax 6 and post-processing in Adobe Photoshop CC.

*Technical reports courtesy of Solar Influence Data Center (SIDC), NOAA-Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA-SWPC)

Weather Data (4:45PM – 5:05PM, February 16, 2019):

Average Temperature: 29.6°C

Average Humidity: 25.5%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 21.5 kph from S

Average Cloud Cover: 40%

Average Air Pressure: 1002.35 hpa

Average Solar Radiation: 127.065 W/m^2

Average UV Radiation: 99µW/m^2 (low)