SUNSPOT MONITORING – APRIL 1, 2021

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, April 1, 2021.

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

The Sun remains in its spotless and relatively inactive 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.

Nothing significant going on with the Sun lately with just several short stable filaments at the Sun’s extreme southern quadrant, small enhanced plages associated with former AR2811 and AR2812 approaching the NW limb, as well as few small quiescent prominences at the opposite NW, SW, and SE limbs, as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at very low levels with chances of solar flares of up to B-class intensity only. 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 QHYCCD 290III 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 (4:35 PM – 5:00 PM, April 1, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 34.73°C

Average Humidity: 9.33%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 19.33 kph from NNW

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 1000.0 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 343.0 W/m^2

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