No sunspot monitoring posts were issued from February 19-21, 2021 due to unfavorable weather condition prevailed on those dates.
Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, February 22, 2021.
The sky was mostly clear with intermittent moderate breeze which provided good transparency but average seeing at the time these images were taken.Â
AR2803 has recently decayed into plage. On the other hand, a new small bipolar sunspot group AR2804 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Bxo/beta) has emerged in the far northern hemisphere, close to the Sun’s meridian. Another small region of pores has popped out at the Sun’s southern hemisphere (encircled). No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 17.
Other noteworthy solar features featured were some small quiescent and huge eruptive prominences (at the SW limbs) at the limbs, as well enhanced plages associated with the upper-mentioned active regions, as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at low levels with chances of solar flares of up to B-class intensity, mainly from AR2804. 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 18, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 28.5°C
Average Humidity: 33.67%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 26.4 kph from NNW
Average Cloud Cover: 5%
Average Air Pressure: 1006.3 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 235.67 W/m^2
