Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, February 3, 2021.
The sky was mostly clear with intermittent light to moderate breeze which provided good transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.
Solar activity has remained at very low levels over the past 24 hours. AR2801 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Axx/alpha) has decayed much of its structure over the past 24 hours and was generally inactive. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 11. Nothing much significant going on with the Sun lately except mostly small quiescent prominences mostly at the southwestern limb, few short mound filaments at the far northern and southeastern hemisphere quadrant, and the small disintegrating plage associated with AR2801, 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, mainly from AR2801. Close monitoring is being conducted by numerous space weather agencies for any significant development, especially from the emerging new developing active region.
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)