No sunspot monitoring posts were issued for the past 2 days (August 8-9, 2020) due to unfavorable weather (overcast sky) conditions.

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, August 10, 2020.

The sky was slightly hazy with intermittent moderate breeze which provided average transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.

Over the past 72 hours, the lone visible sunspot group AR2770 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Cso/beta) encountered some sunspot structure changes, including shrinkage of its leader spot and development of few trailer spots, but has been relatively quiet. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 13. 

The remnant enhanced plages associated with the former AR2769, as well as the evident bipolar structure of AR2770 remain clearly visible, as well as a thick stable filament at the far northeastern quadrant, and some small quiescent prominences at the limbs were distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at low levels with chances of weak X-ray fluxes or flares up to B-class (possibly up to C-class) intensity mainly from AR2770. 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 QHYCCD290III 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 (5:35 PM – 6:00 PM, August 7, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 40.1°C

Average Humidity: 38.33%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 21.13 kph from NNW

Average Cloud Cover: 15%

Average Air Pressure: 985.43 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 116.0 W/m^2