No sunspot monitoring was issued yesterday, April 18-22, 2020, due to unfavorable weather (overcast, slightly dusty) condition.

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, April 22, 2020.

The sky was generally clear with intermittent light to moderate winds which provided good transparency and average seeing at the time these images were taken.

The Sun has been spotless and quiet over the past few days, extending its streak to 17 consecutive days. No major flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. The Sun exhibited few moderately huge prominences at the northeastern limb and some faint eruptive ones at the southwestern limb as the only noteworthy solar features 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 (5:00 PM – 5:25 PM, April 22, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 31.95°C

Average Humidity: 30%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 16.95 kph from N

Average Cloud Cover: 5%

Average Air Pressure: 1000.7 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 276.5 W/m^2