SUNSPOT MONITORING – FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, February 17, 2021.

The sky was mostly clear with intermittent light to moderate breeze which provided good transparency but average seeing at the time these images were taken. 

The Sun remains spotless and very low solar activity has prevailed on its 13th consecutive day. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. Nothing going on with the Sun lately exhibited some moderately huge eruptive prominences at the northeastern and southeastern limbs, and some short receding stable filaments at the Sun’s far southern quadrant, as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at very low levels with chances of solar flares of up to B-class intensity. 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, February 16, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 32.6°C

Average Humidity: 15%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 11.03 kph from S

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 1001.93 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 265.33 W/m^2

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