Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, March 11, 2019.
The sky was mostly cloudy (imaged through brief sky windows) with intermittent light to moderate winds which provided average seeing and transparency at the time these images were taken.
The lone visible sunspot group AR2734 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Axx/alpha) was mostly quiet over the past 24 hours (from the previous monitoring), though it produced a minor B6.1 solar flare following a weak slow-moving CME which are both not Earth-directed and will not significantly affect the planet. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 11. Other solar features observed are a huge eruptive prominence at the northwestern limb, and small filaments and plages, including the ones associated with AR2734.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to remain at very low levels with chances of weak X-ray fluxes or flares ranging up to B-class (up to isolated C-class) intensity, mainly from AR2734. The extent of the frequency and intensity of the Sun’s activity will highly depend on the magnetic flux fluctuations happening in the visible ARs in the coming 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 and Lunt H-alpha solar telescope and ZWO120MM CMOS camera for H-alpha imagery, mounted on Skywatcher EQ6 Pro. 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 (5:05PM – 5:35PM, March 11, 2019):
Average Temperature: 23.3°C
Average Humidity: 31%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 23.67 kph from NW
Average Cloud Cover: 70%
Average Air Pressure: 1005.27 hpa
Average Solar Radiation: 128.9 W/m^2
Average UV Radiation: 99 µW/m^2 (low)
