SUNSPOT MONITORING – JANUARY 8, 2020

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, January 8, 2020.

The sky was clear with intermittent light winds which provided good seeing and transparency at the time these images were taken.

AR2755 and the recently spotted active region at the eastern limb yesterday have decayed into plages. Meanwhile, a small area of pores (unnumbered at the moment) was spotted developing at the northwestern section of the Sun’s disk. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 2. Plages associated from the decayed former active regions (AR2755 and the one at the eastern limb), together with few quiescent prominences (with the exception of huge eruptive one at the northeastern limb) 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 QHYCCDIII mono 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 (4:20 PM – 4:40 PM, January 8, 2020):

Average Temperature: 25.2°C

Average Humidity: 26%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 8.6 kph from WSW

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 1005.05 hpa

Average Solar Radiation: 241.76 W/m^2

Average UV Radiation: 0 µW/m^2 (low)

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