Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, January 26, 2019.
The sky was clear with light air turbulence making the seeing and transparency good at the time these images were taken.
The lone visible sunspot group AR2733 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Dai/beta) continues to develop in structure and complexity; particularly consolidation on its trailer spots and penumbra on its leader spot. It produced numerous minor B-class flares throughout the 24-hour monitoring period by space weather agencies*. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 26. Other solar features include the clear plage structure of AR2733, several quiescent and few eruptive 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 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 26, 2019):
Average Temperature: 30.3C
Average Humidity: 14.7%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 10.6 kph from WSW
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 1008.1 hpa
Average Light: 143.7 W/m^2
Average UV Radiation: 99µW/m^2 (low)
