Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, January 27, 2019.
The sky was clear with intermittent light to moderate winds which provided good transparency but average seeing at the time these images were taken.
Yesterday, a C5-class solar flare was emitted from the lone visible sunspot group AR2733 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Dsi/beta). Since the active region is displaced slightly to the Sun’s west, the effect of the recorded flare won’t be Earth-directed and will not affect Earth significantly. It experienced further consolidation among its trailer and header spots and remained its bipolar magnetic complexity. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 28. Other solar features include the clear plage structure with some small filaments associated with AR2733 and few huge eruptive prominences at the limbs as 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 solar flares ranging up to B-class (possibly 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 (4:45PM – 5:30PM, January 27, 2019):
Average Temperature: 28.4C
Average Humidity: 24.75%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 19 kph from NNE
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 1007.775 hpa
Average Light: 120.865 W/m^2
Average UV Radiation: 99µW/m^2
