SUNSPOT MONITORING – FEBRUARY 24, 2019

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, February 24, 2019.

The sky was mostly clear with intermittent light to moderate winds making the seeing and transparency average at the time these images were taken.

The Sun remains in its spotless and inactive state with no significant flaring activity recorded over the past 48 hours (from the previous monitoring). The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0.  Observed solar features are several moderately large eruptive prominences, as well as the remnant plage of former AR2733 with a small stable disintegrating filament at western section of the Sun’s visible disk as 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. 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 and Lunt H-alpha solar telescope and ZWO120MM CMOS camera for H-alpha imagery, mounted on Skywatcher EQ6 Pro. 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 (4:45PM – 5:05PM, February 24, 2019):

Average Temperature: 30.2°C

Average Humidity: 28%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 21.5 kph from N

Average Cloud Cover: 10%

Average Air Pressure: 1003.15 hpa

Average Solar Radiation: 159.86 W/m^2

Average UV Radiation: 99 µW/m^2 (low)

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