Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, April 17, 2019.
The sky was mostly clear with intermittent light to moderate winds making the seeing and transparency average at the time these images were taken.
There are two sunspot groups visible on the Sun’s disk. First is the huge sunspot group AR2738 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Hhx/alpha) which exhibited very little to no change in structure and was generally inactive over the past 24 hours, and a new developing sunspot region (encircled) currently undesignated (future AR2739), which will be monitored for its development and if it shall contribute to solar activity intensity in the coming few days. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 13. Other solar features are few moderately huge and small quiescent prominences at the limbs and plages associated with the two sunspot regions as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to remain at very 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 – 5:15 PM, April 17, 2019):
Average Temperature: 35.4°C
Average Humidity: 19%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 20.8 kph from N
Average Cloud Cover: 5%
Average Air Pressure: 999.83 hpa
Average Solar Radiation: 208.33 W/m^2
Average UV Radiation: 393 µW/m^2 (low)
 
