SUNSPOT MONITORING – APRIL 14, 2020

No sunspot monitoring was issued from April 11-13, 2020 due to unfavorable weather condition.

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, April 14, 2020.

The sky was partly cloudy with moderate to fresh breeze which provided average to poor seeing and transparency at the time these images were taken.

The Sun is generally spotless and quiet over the past 24 hours. No major flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. The Sun exhibited a couple of moderately huge prominence activities at the opposite (particularly at the northeastern and southwestern) limbs as 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 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 – 5:35 PM, April 14, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 30.45°C

Average Humidity: 42%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 30.8 kph from NNE

Average Cloud Cover: 55%

Average Air Pressure: 1000.2 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 223 W/m^2

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