Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, April 17, 2020.

The sky was mostly clear with intermittent light to moderate winds which provided good transparency and average seeing 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 significant going on with the Sun lately except for few a moderately huge prominence at the south-southwestern limb as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery. The huge prominence spotted yesterday was ejected.

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 17, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 29°C

Average Humidity: 39.5%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 26.1 kph from NNW

Average Cloud Cover: 5%

Average Air Pressure: 1000 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 213 W/m^2