SUNSPOT MONITORING – DECEMBER 18, 2020

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, December 18, 2020.

The sky was generally clear with intermittent light breeze which provided good transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.

Solar activity has returned to very low levels over the past 24 hours.  The lone visible sunspot group AR2793 (Axx/alpha) has further disintegrated in structure (barely visible in white-light imagery) and remained inactive over the past 24 hours. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 11. Nothing much significant going on with the Sun lately aside from exhibiting few huge eruptive prominences mostly at the northwestern and southwestern limbs, small enhanced plages associated with former AR2792, and AR2783; as well some stable elongated filaments at the Sun’s southwestern quadrant were distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at very low levels with chances of solar flares of B-class (possibly isolated C-class) intensity, mainly from upper-mentioned sunspot groups. 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 (4:30 PM – 5:00 PM, December 18, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 26.07°C

Average Humidity: 25.33%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 3.97 kph from NNEE

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 1007.53 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 120.67 W/m^2

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