Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, March 12, 2021.
The sky was slightly hazy (with upper-level dust) with intermittent moderate breeze which provided average transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.Â
AR2808 (Cso/beta) exhibited slight shrinkage on its lone unipolar sunspot though it developed few small spots on its trailer but is generally dormant. AR2809 (Axx/alpha) has significantly decayed into plage, barely seen in white-light imagery. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 24.
Nothing much significantly going on with the Sun lately aside from some small enhanced plages associated with AR2808, remnants of AR2809, and another undeveloped one at the northern mid-latitudes, as well as few minor prominences at the limbs, and a short stable mount filament near the SE 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 up to B-class (possibly up to isolated C-class) intensity mainly from AR2808. 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 (4:35 PM – 5:05 PM, March 12, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 37.9°C
Average Humidity: 7.0%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 17.07 kph from WSW
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 997.4 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 271.33 W/m^2
