Here is today’s white-light solar image taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, July 1, 2020.

The sky was mostly covered with cirrus clouds (from a dissipating thunderstorm) with intermittent moderate winds which provided poor transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.

The Sun remains generally inactive over the past 24 hours, on its 3rd consecutive day. Meanwhile, space weather agencies are currently monitoring an emerging small sunspot region belonging to Solar Cycle 25 (reverse magnetic polarity) at the southeastern section of the Sun’s disk (encircled). SIDC has designated it as Catania sunspot group 33. NOAA-SWPC and other space weather agencies will wait for it to maintain or further develop its structure for a full day before designation. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. No H-alpha solar images were taken due to obstruction of clouds.

Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to remain at very low levels with chances of weak X-ray fluxes or flares up to B-class intensity. 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. 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 (5:40 PM – 6:00 PM, July 1, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 40.6°C

Average Humidity: 38%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 23.6 kph from N

Average Cloud Cover: 90%

Average Air Pressure: 985.45 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 178 W/m^2