No sunspot monitoring post was issued yesterday, June 23, 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 24, 2021.
The sky was mostly clear 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 slight shrinkage in its unipolar sunspot structure while approaching the NW limb. No significant flaring activity recorded throughout the monitoring period. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 11.
Other noteworthy solar features observed were disintegrating plages near AR2833 and the remnant enhanced plages of former recurrent sunspot group AR2831 and AR2832 near the NE and SE limbs which recently rotated into Earth-view, some short stable filaments across the Sun’s disk, and mostly small quiescent prominences at the limbs, as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at 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 24, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 41.83°C
Average Humidity: 20.67%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 26.27 kph from NNW
Average Cloud Cover: 5%
Average Air Pressure: 990.0 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 148.67 W/m^2
