No sunspot monitoring posts were issued yesterday (August 12, 2020) due to unfavorable weather (mostly cloudy sky) conditions.

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, August 13, 2020.

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

Over the past 48 hours, the new sunspot group AR2771 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Bxo/beta) emerged at the southeastern limb and exhibited few tiny spots under weak magnetic shear.  Meanwhile, the other visible sunspot group AR2770 (Axx/alpha) continues to remain quiet and gradually decaying. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 24. No significant flaring activity from both sunspot groups was recorded. The small enhanced plages associated with the upper-mentioned sunspot groups, together with several huge eruptive 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 AR2771. 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 13, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 37.4°C

Average Humidity: 46%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 22.07 kph from NNW

Average Cloud Cover: 10%

Average Air Pressure: 985.2 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 129.0 W/m^2