SUNSPOT MONITORING – JUNE 29, 2021

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, June 29, 2021.

The sky was mostly clear with light breeze which provided good transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.

AR2835 (Dsi/beta-gamma) exhibited further growth of its entire sunspot structure and produced multiple B-class and a C1.2-class flare over the past 48 hours. Meanwhile, AR2836 (Bxo/beta) experienced some slight shrinkage of its leader and trailer spots, as well as magnetic stability.  Another small sunspot group has rotated into Earth-view from the NE limb and was designated as AR2837 (Hsx/alpha); currently possessing a simple unipolar magnetic configuration and quiescent at this point. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 53. 

Other noteworthy solar features observed were enhanced plages associated with the upper-mentioned sunspot groups and the ones from former undeveloped active regions transiting the Sun’s disk, and few stable and eruptive elongated filaments across the Sun’s disk, 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 the upper mentioned sunspot groups 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 29, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 43.23°C

Average Humidity: 16.33%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 3.6 kph from NE

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 992.0 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 147.0 W/m^2

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