Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, July 20, 2021.
The sky was mostly clear with moderate to fresh breeze which provided good transparency but average seeing at the time these images were taken.
AR2842 (Cro/beta) exhibited some consolidation on the intermediate section of its sunspot structure and slightly expanded in coverage area. Former AR2838 has been redesignated as AR2846 (Dro/beta) after its return to Earth-view; seemed to have slightly shrunk in size compared to 2 weeks ago. Meanwhile, the far-SE sunspot group AR2844 has completely decayed into plage. AR2845 (Axx/alpha) continues to disintegrate (barely visible in white-light imagery) and remained inactive. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 43. A pair of long duration C-class solar flares were recorded mostly from an active region just behind the SE limb, based on the latest bulletins posted by space weather agencies.
Other noteworthy solar features observed were the enhanced plages of the upper-mentioned sunspot groups, few elongated stable filaments across the Sun’s disk, and small quiescent prominences mainly at the NE limb, as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast low solar activity with chances of B-class to C-class solar flares in the next few 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. 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 (5:30 PM – 6:00 PM, July 20, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 40.3°C
Average Humidity: 30.67%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 29.4 kph from NNW
Average Cloud Cover: 5%
Average Air Pressure: 987.0 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 165.67 W/m^2
P.S. Due to the ongoing long Eid’l Adha holiday, we won’t be posting our sunspot monitoring bulletins starting tomorrow, July 21-25, 2021. We will be back next week. For the latest solar updates, feel free to check out spaceweather.com, SIDC, NOAA-SWPC and other space weather websites. Clear skies.
