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

The sky was clear with light air turbulence making the seeing and transparency good at the time these images were taken.

A new sunspot region has emerged and was recently designated as AR2735 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Cxo/beta). No significant flaring activity associated with AR2735 was recorded upon its emergence.  The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 15.  Other solar features observed are several prominences (mostly small quiescent ones with the exception of a huge eruptive one at the northwestern limb) at the limbs, as well as a large elongated filament and plages associated with AR2735 as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to remain at low levels with chances of weak X-ray fluxes or flares ranging up to B-class (possibly up to isolated C-class) intensity, mainly from the newly emerged AR2735. The extent of the frequency and intensity of the Sun’s activity will highly depend on the magnetic flux fluctuations happening in the visible ARs in the coming 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 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 (4:50PM – 5:05PM, March 18, 2019):

Average Temperature: 23.4°C

Average Humidity: 33%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 27.6 kph from N

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 1006.2 hpa

Average Solar Radiation: 172.92 W/m^2

Average UV Radiation: 319.5 µW/m^2 (low)