No sunspot monitoring were issued last April 3-4, 2021, due to unfavorable weather conditions on the intended observation times.
Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, April 5, 2021.
The sky was mostly clear with intermittent moderate to fresh breeze which provided good transparency but average seeing at the time these images were taken.Â
After 3 days of spotlessness, the lone visible sunspot group AR2813 (Axx/alpha) originally emerged as a bipolar sunspot group last April 4, 2021, but decayed significantly especially on its trailer spots over the past 24 hours as it nears the NW limb. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 11.
Nothing significant going on with the Sun lately except for small enhanced plages associated with AR2813 and few other small ones near the SE limb, as well as few small quiescent prominences and eruptive ones at the NW, SW, and SE limbs, as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at very low levels with chances of solar flares of up to B-class intensity, mainly from AR2813. 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 (4:40 PM – 5:05 PM, April 5, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 28.75°C
Average Humidity: 33.5%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 30.6 kph from WNW
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 1003.25 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 271.0 W/m^2
