Here is today’s white-light solar imagery taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, March 18, 2020. No H-alpha images were taken due to obstruction of clouds shortly after.
The sky was mostly cloudy (imaged through a brief sky window) with intermittent light winds which provided good seeing but average to poor transparency at the time these images were taken.
The Sun remains in its spotless and generally inactive over the past 24 hours, extending its streak to 8 consecutive days. No major flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0.
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 intensity. 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 QHYCCDIII mono 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 (5:45 PM, March 18, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 32.8°C
Average Humidity: 17%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 10.1 kph from SE
Average Cloud Cover: 90%
Average Air Pressure: 1001.7 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 61 W/m^2
