Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, March 20, 2020.

The sky was partly to mostly cloudy with intermittent light to moderate winds (imaged through brief sky windows) which provided average to poor transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.

The Sun remains in its spotless and generally inactive over the past 24 hours, extending its streak to 10 consecutive days. No major flaring activity was recorded. The potential active region spotted and being monitored yesterday has decayed. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. Observed solar features were a small enhanced plage which recently rotated into Earth-view at the east-northeastern quadrant and few quiescent prominences at the northwestern and southwestern limbs as 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 QHYCCDIII mono 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 – 5:45 PM, March 20, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 33.13°C

Average Humidity: 32%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 19.77 kph from NNE

Average Cloud Cover: 75%

Average Air Pressure: 997.9 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 113.67 W/m^2