Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, January 29, 2021.
The sky was mostly clear with intermittent light breeze which provided good transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.
Solar activity has remained at very low levels over the past 24 hours. Both inactive sunspot groups AR2797 and AR2800 have disintegrated completely its structure into plage, leaving the Sun currently spotless. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0.
Despite the absence of any designated sunspot groups, the Sun exhibited several huge eruptive prominences particularly at the northeastern and southeastern limbs with faint ones at the northwestern limb, few short stable filaments at the far northern and southern hemispheres, and the remnant enhanced plages associated with the former AR2797 and AR2800 and the undeveloped one beside AR2797, as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity gradual decrease in solar activity but still within low levels with chances of solar flares of up to B-class (possibly isolated C-class) intensity, mainly from AR2797. Close monitoring is being conducted by numerous space weather agencies for any significant development, especially from the emerging new developing active region.
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 29, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 28.2°C
Average Humidity: 28.67%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 7.57 kph from southerly direction
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 1006.6 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 200.67 W/m^2