Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, January 18, 2019.

The sky was mostly clear but with intermittent light to moderate breeze which provided average to poor seeing and transparency at the time these images were taken.

The Sun remains spotless as generally very low solar activity has persisted over the past 24 hours. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0.  Despite the absence of sunspots, several eruptive prominences at the limbs 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 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 (4:30PM – 5PM, January 18, 2019):

Average Temperature: 22.4C

Average Humidity: 46%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 18kph N

Average Cloud Cover: 10%

Average Air Pressure: 1005.967hpa

Average Light: 152.12 W/m^2

Average UV Radiation: 246 µW/m^2 (low)