No sunspot monitoring was issued over the past 4 days (April 10-13, 2019) due to generally unfavorable (mostly cloudy/overcast sky condition with occasional thunderstorm events) weather during daytime hours.
Today, the sky was overall clear with intermittent light to moderate winds which provided average seeing and transparency at the time these images were taken.
Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, April 14, 2019.
From the previous solar monitoring issue, the lone visible sunspot group AR2738 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Cho/alpha) has been producing several minor B-class solar flares as it transits across the solar disk. Its sunspot structure has not experienced any significant change over the past few days, exhibiting a huge leader spot with a “light-bridge” and some small spots on its trailer, spanning about 200,000 kilometers across. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 15. Some huge eruptive hedgerow prominences at the limbs, as well as the widely scattered plages associated with AR2738, were 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 AR2738. 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 (4:50 PM – 5:20 PM, April 14, 2019):
Average Temperature: 26.9°C
Average Humidity: 44%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 33.5 kph from WNW
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 1000.3 hpa
Average Solar Radiation: 175.22 W/m^2
Average UV Radiation: 393 µW/m^2 (low)
