Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, July 31, 2021.
The sky was mostly covered with high cirrus clouds (from a passing dissipating thunderstorm cloud) with moderate breeze which provided average to poor transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.
Solar activity has remained at very low levels with no visible sunspot groups existing on the Sun’s disk for 3 consecutive days. No significant flaring activity was recorded over the past 24 hours. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0.
Enhanced plages associated with all former sunspot groups, few elongated filaments at the Sun’s southwestern quadrant and few small quiescent prominences at the limbs were distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast very low solar activity to persist in the next few days with chances of solar 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. 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 31, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 43.9°C
Average Humidity: 10.67%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 20.23 kph from NNW
Average Cloud Cover: 90%
Average Air Pressure: 988.0 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 140.67 W/m^2
