SUNSPOT MONITORING – OCTOBER 5, 2021

No sunspot monitoring posts were issued from October 1-4, 2021, due to unfavorable weather conditions prevailed on those dates, mainly brought by Cyclone Shaheen.

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, October 5, 2021.

The sky was mostly clear with light to moderate breeze (fresh upper-level winds) which provided good transparency but average to poor seeing at the time these images were taken.

Solar activity is at very low levels over the past 24 hours. Two sunspot groups are currently visible on the Sun’s disk; the gradually decaying bipolar AR2880 (Cso/beta) and the larger unipolar AR2882 (Hsx/alpha) which recently rotated from the NE limb. Both active regions are relatively stable and quiet with no significant flaring activity recorded throughout the monitoring period. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 25.

Nothing much significant going on with the Sun lately aside from some small quiescent prominences at the NE and SW limbs, the enhanced plages associated with the upper-mentioned sunspot groups, and several short stable filaments across the Sun’s disk as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* expect low solar activity to persist with the likelihood of flaring activities not exceeding C-class levels in the next few 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. 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 (5:00 PM – 5:30 PM, October 5, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 38.23°C

Average Humidity: 23.33%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 9.83 kph from NNE

Average Cloud Cover: 5%

Average Air Pressure: 1001.0 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 138.0 W/m^2

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