Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, August 18, 2018.

The sky was clear with light air turbulence making the seeing and transparency good at the time these images were taken.

Very low solar activity has persisted over the past 24 hours. The lone visible sunspot group AR2718 was inactive; did not produce any significant flaring activity, based on space weather records. Meanwhile, a region of plage (encircled) was spotted to be developing into a potential active region. This will be closely monitored on its progress and its effect on solar activity intensity in the next few days. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 11.  Few large eruptive prominences at the opposite limbs and a huge filament at the northeastern portion of the Sun’s disk were 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.

*Technical reports courtesy of Solar Influence Data Center (SIDC), NOAA-Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA-SWPC)