Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, October 1, 2019.

The sky was mostly clear with moderate winds which provided good transparency but average seeing at the time these images were taken.

After 27 consecutive days of spotlessness, a new unnumbered small active region has recently emerged at the southeastern portion of the Sun’s disk. It will be closely monitored for its development and its potential effect in solar activity in the next few days. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 11. No significant flaring activity was recorded. Its associated enhanced plage, together with some huge 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. 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 (5:10 PM – 5:30 PM, October 1, 2019):

Average Temperature: 36.6°C

Average Humidity: 43%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 28.1 kph from N

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 995.8 hpa

Average Solar Radiation: 76.84 W/m^2

Average UV Radiation: 30 µW/m^2 (low)