Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, January 18, 2021.
The sky was generally clear with intermittent light to moderate breeze which provided good transparency but average seeing at the time these images were taken.
AR2796 has completely decayed into plage over the past 24 hours. Having rotated further into Earth-view, the lone visible sunspot group AR2797 (Cao/beta) grew out its leader spot with few more tiny sunspots at the intermediate and trailer sections while exhibiting a relatively weak bipolar magnetic configuration. Few B-class solar flares originated from this sunspot group were recorded by space weather agencies throughout the 24-hour monitoring period. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 15.
Other solar features observed were several minor plasma ejections through the presence of a few small faint quiescent and some huge eruptive prominences (at the SW section) at the limbs, few short stable filaments at the far southern hemisphere, and the small enhanced plages associated with the upper-mentioned sunspot groups 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 AR2797. 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, January 19, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 25.93°C
Average Humidity: 33.33%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 18.73 kph from NNW
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 1006.27 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 179.67 W/m^2
