Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, April 26, 2021.
The sky was partly cloudy with intermittent moderate breeze which provided average transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.
Former AR2816 has completely decayed into plage but produced a minor C2.0 class solar flare as recorded last April 25 at 0135 UTC while approaching the SW limb. Meanwhile, AR2818 (Hsx/alpha) remained stable and inactive. Additionally, the other bipolar sunspot groups AR2820 (Dai/beta) and newly designated AR2821 (Cso/beta) which rapidly emerged into Earth-view also exhibited an overall slight increase in coverage area and spot growth and produced a couple more B-class and C1.3-class solar flares over the past 48 hours. A weak non-Earth directed CME event associated with a filament eruption at the SE quadrant that occurred yesterday, April 25, 2021, was also recorded by both SIDC and NOAA-SWPC. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 47.
Enhanced plages associated with the upper mentioned sunspot groups, few mound eruptive filaments mostly at the extreme southern hemisphere, and a few small faint quiescent and moderately huge eruptive prominences mainly at the NW and NE limbs, were the other notable solar features distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at low levels with chances of solar flares of B-class to C-class intensity, mainly from the upper-mentioned active sunspot regions. 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. For H-alpha imagery, the equipment used are Lunt 60mm H-alpha solar telescope, and QHYCCD 290III mono camera; all mounted on Skywatcher EQ6 pro mount 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 (5:30 PM – 5:50 PM, April 26, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 38.0°C
Average Humidity: 12.67%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 22.2 kph from NNW
Average Cloud Cover: 35%
Average Air Pressure: 997.2 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 132.67 W/m^2
