Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, August 18, 2021.
The sky was mostly clear with light breeze which provided good transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.
Solar activity has been at low levels over the past 24 hours. AR2857 has decayed into plage. Meanwhile, a new bipolar sunspot group which just recently designated as AR2858 (Bxo/beta) emerged near the Sun’s meridian. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 13.
Remnant plages of former sunspot groups AR2857 and AR2853, some small quiescent and huge eruptive prominences at the limbs and shallow filaments within post-AR2853 and the one at the NE limb, were distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast very low solar activity of only B-class solar flares in the next few days, mainly from AR2858. 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 (5:30 PM – 6:00 PM, August 18, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 43.2°C
Average Humidity: 22%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 4.33 kph from various directions (westerly)
Average Cloud Cover: 5%
Average Air Pressure: 996.0 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 112.0 W/m^2
