No sunspot monitoring posts were issued from March 21 – 22, 2020, due to unfavorable weather conditions.

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, March 23, 2020.

The sky was generally clear but with intermittent moderate to fresh winds which provided good transparency but average to poor seeing at the time these images were taken.

The Sun remains in its spotless and generally inactive state over the past few days, extending its streak to 13 consecutive days. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. Despite the absence of visible sunspot groups, the Sun exhibited several diverse huge eruptive prominences at the northeastern, northwestern, and southwestern limbs and an elongated filament at the northwestern quadrant as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

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 (5:00 PM – 5:15 PM, March 23, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 23.25°C

Average Humidity: 34%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 25.2 kph from NW

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 1003.5 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 228 W/m^2