Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, January 23, 2019.
The sky was slightly hazy with intermittent light to moderate winds which provided average to poor seeing and transparency at the time these images were taken.
The lone visible sunspot group AR2733 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot classification: Cro/beta) experienced a halt on its growth and showed some spot decay on its trailer portion, otherwise unchanged over the past 24 hours. No significant flaring activity associated with sunspot group. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 20. Several eruptive prominences at the limbs, a huge stable prominence at the southwestern portion of the Sun’s disk, and few plages including the one associated with AR2733 were distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to remain at low levels with chances of weak X-ray fluxes or flares ranging up to B-class (possibly up to isolated C-class) intensity. The extent of the frequency and intensity of the Sun’s activity will highly depend on the magnetic flux fluctuations happening in the visible ARs in the coming days. 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 – 5:15PM, January 23, 2019):
Average Temperature: 23.8C
Average Humidity: 41.6%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 16.5 kph from N
Average Cloud Cover: 15%
Average Air Pressure: 1006.1 hpa
Average Light: 148.8 W/m^2
Average UV Radiation: 246 µW/m^2 (low)
