Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, September 18, 2020.

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

The Sun remains spotless and generally inactive on its 28th consecutive day. No significant flaring activity was recorded over the past 24 hours. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. Nothing much significant going on with the Sun lately aside from just tiny quiescent prominences at the limbs, a faint mound filament approaching the northwestern limb, and a small plage at the southern hemisphere as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at very low levels with chances of weak X-ray fluxes or flares 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. For H-alpha imagery, the equipment used are Lunt 60mm H-alpha solar telescope, and QHYCCD290III 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 (5:00 PM – 5:20 PM, September 17, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 38.35°C

Average Humidity: 29%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 25.75 kph from NNW

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 994.1 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 175 W/m^2