SUNSPOT MONITORING – AUGUST 10, 2019

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, August 10, 2019.

The sky was hazy with moderate winds which provided poor seeing and transparency at the time these images were taken.

The Sun remains in its spotless and generally inactive state over the past 24 hours. No significant flaring activity was recorded.  The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. Despite the absence of sunspot groups, the Sun exhibited active plasma ejections through the presence of several eruptive prominences at the limbs as 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. 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.

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 ZWO120MM CMOS 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 (5:55 PM – 6:15 PM, August 10, 2019):

Average Temperature: 41.2°C

Average Humidity: 40%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 24.5 kph from N

Average Cloud Cover: 80% (haze)

Average Air Pressure: 982.6 hpa

Average Solar Radiation: 81.79 W/m^2

Average UV Radiation: 99 µW/m^2 (low)

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