Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, January 22, 2019.
The sky was clear with intermittent light to moderate winds which provided avergae seeing and good transparency at the time these images were taken.
A new active region has recently emerged and designated as AR2733 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh spot classification: Bro/beta). Over the past 24 hours, space weather agencies* recorded few minor A-class and B-class solar flares associated with this sunspot group. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 16. Other solar features visible are the clear bipolar structure of AR2733, together with its plage, few eruptive and quiescent prominences at the limbs, as well as a large filament at the southeastern portion of the disk as 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 (possibly up to isolated C-class) intensity, mainly from AR2733. The extent of the frequency and intensity of the Sun’s activity will highly depend on the magnetic flux fluctuations happening in the visible ARs in the coming days. 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 (4:15PM – 4:30PM, January 22, 2019):
Average Temperature: 22.5C
Average Humidity: 51%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 22 kph NW
Average Cloud Cover: 2%
Average Air Pressure: 1005.6 hpa
Average Light: 240.695 W/m^2
Average UV Radiation: 540 µW/m^2 (low)
