Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, February 4, 2021.
The sky was mostly clear with intermittent light breeze which provided good transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.Â
Solar activity has remained at very low levels over the past 24 hours. The lone visible sunspot group AR2801 has completely disintegrated into plage, leaving the Sun spotless again. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. Nothing much significant going on with the Sun lately aside from mostly faint moderately huge eruptive prominences especially at the southwestern limbs, and the remnant plages of former AR2801 near the northwestern limb, 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)
Weather Data (11:00 AM – 11:30 AM, February 4, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 22.37°C
Average Humidity: 63.67%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 8.5 kph from northerly direction
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 1009.33 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 655.67 W/m^2
