SUNSPOT MONITORING – JANUARY 25, 2019

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, January 25, 2019.

The sky was clear with light air turbulence making the seeing and transparency good at the time these images were taken.

Generally low solar activity has persisted over the past 24 hours. The lone visible sunspot group AR2733 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot classification: Dri/beta) experienced slight expansion on its intermediate spots and produced few minor B-class flares. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 20.  Other solar features observed are few plages, including the one associated with AR2733, a small stable filament at the near central portion, and several small quiescent prominences at the limbs 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 (possibly up to isolated C-class) intensity, mainly from AR2733. 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 (4:45 PM – 5:00 PM, January 25, 2019):

Average Temperature: 28.7C

Average Humidity: 14%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 3.75 kph from NW

Average Cloud Cover: 5 %

Average Air Pressure: 1007.1 hpa

Average Light: 139.5 W/m^2

Average UV Radiation: 99 µW/m^2 (low)

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