Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, March 18, 2021.
The sky was mostly clear (with upper-level dust) with intermittent moderate breeze which provided good transparency but average seeing at the time these images were taken.
Very low solar activity has prevailed over the past 24 hours. The lone visible sunspot group AR2810 (Hax/alpha) had its leader spot split in two, but currently inactive. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 12. No significant flaring activity was recorded over the past 24 hours.
The Sun exhibited mostly small faint quiescent ones at the limbs, few elongated filaments at the NE and SW quadrants, and the small enhanced plages associated with former AR2808 and AR2810, as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at very low levels with chances of solar flares of up to B-class intensity mainly from AR2810. 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 (4:30 PM – 5:00 PM, March 18, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 37.8°C
Average Humidity: 8.0%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 20.17 kph from NW
Average Cloud Cover: 5%
Average Air Pressure: 999.0 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 272.67 W/m^2
