Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, April 19, 2018.

The sky was clear but experienced intermittent light to moderate breeze making the seeing and transparency average at the time these images were taken.
A new sunspot group was spotted rotating into Earth-view at the eastern limb and has been designated as AR2706. There were few B-class flares associated with this active region were recorded by space weather agencies throughout the monitoring period which brought a slight uptick in solar activity after being relatively quiet for several days. This will be closely watched for any significant progress as it further rotates Earth-ward. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 11. Some impressive prominence activity mostly from the western limb were 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 intensity (possibly up to C-class), mainly from AR2706. 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.

*Technical reports courtesy of Solar Influence Data Center (SIDC), NOAA-Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA-SWPC)