No sunspot monitoring post was issued yesterday, June 18, 2021, due to relatively hazy and dusty conditions with indecent seeing which prevented us to acquire clear solar images.
Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, June 19, 2021.
The sky was slightly hazy to partly cloudy (from an approaching thunderstorm cloud) with moderate to fresh breeze which provided average to poor transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.
The lone visible sunspot group AR2833 (Bxo/beta) exhibited slight growth in its sunspot structure, particularly growth of the leader spot’s umbral and intermediate spots. Meanwhile, the other sunspot group AR2834 has just decayed completely (as of posting) while approaching the NW limb. Both sunspot groups are inactive at this point with no significant flaring activity recorded throughout the monitoring period. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 14.
Enhanced plages at the southern section of AR2833 and on its trailer, some short and elongated stable filaments across the Sun’s disk, especially beside AR2833, and mostly small quiescent prominences especially at the NW, SE and SW limbs, were the other noteworthy solar features distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to remain at very low levels with chances of solar flares of mostly B-class to possibly isolated C-class intensity, mainly from AR2833 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, June 19, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 37.6°C
Average Humidity: 53.0%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 26.53 kph from NNW
Average Cloud Cover: 55%
Average Air Pressure: 987.67 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 139.67 W/m^2
