No sunspot monitoring was issued yesterday, April 16, 2020, due to unfavorable weather (stormy) condition.

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, April 16, 2020.

The sky was partly cloudy with intermittent light to moderate winds which provided average 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. Not much going on with the Sun lately except for a huge eruptive prominence (about 100,000 km high) at the south-southeasterly limb is the only notable feature 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 16, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 28.85°C

Average Humidity: 52.5%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 18.2 kph from N/NW

Average Cloud Cover: 50%

Average Air Pressure: 1000.05 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 186 W/m^2