No sunspot monitoring post was issued yesterday, June 21, 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 22, 2021.
The sky was slightly hazy to partly cloudy skies 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 (Hsx/alpha) exhibited no significant change in its huge unipolar sunspot structure, with some disintegration of upper pores. Two more sunspot groups from the NE and SE limbs are about to rotate into Earth-view in the next 24 hours. No significant flaring activity recorded throughout the monitoring period. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 12.
Enhanced plages near AR2833 and the recurrent sunspot groups, some short stable and huge eruptive filaments across the Sun’s disk, especially beside AR2833, and mostly small quiescent prominences especially at the NW and NE limbs, were the other noteworthy solar features distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at to 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 22, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 41.77°C
Average Humidity: 16.67%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 26.53 kph from N
Average Cloud Cover: 10% (slight haze)
Average Air Pressure: 990.0 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 144.0 W/m^2
