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Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, March 30, 2021.
The sky was mostly clear with intermittent moderate to fresh breeze which provided good transparency but average to poor seeing at the time these images were taken.
The lone visible sunspot group AR2812 (Bxo/beta) underwent significant decay in its structure over the past 24 hours, almost barely visible in white-light imagery. No significant flaring activity was recorded by space weather agencies throughout the monitoring period. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 12.
Other solar features observed were few short stable filaments across the Sun’s disk especially at the extreme southern quadrant, small enhanced plages associated with former AR2811 and AR2812, as, well as several non-Earth directed plasma ejections including a huge eruptive prominence at the opposite NW limb, as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at very low levels with chances of solar flares of up to B-class intensity mainly from AR2812. 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. For H-alpha imagery, the equipment used are Lunt 60mm H-alpha solar telescope, and QHYCCD 290III mono camera; all mounted on Skywatcher EQ6 pro mount 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 (4:35 PM – 5:00 PM, March 29, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 31.33°C
Average Humidity: 27.0%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 23.43 kph from NNW
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 1000.77 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 339.0 W/m^2
