Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, March 5, 2019.

The sky was clear with intermittent light to moderate winds which provided excellent transparency but average seeing  at the time these images were taken.

Generally quiet solar activity has persisted over the past 24 hours. While the area of pores at the southern hemisphere seen yesterday has disintegrated, another small region of pores (encircled) was seen struggling to develop into an active sunspot region at the northwestern quadrant of the Sun’s disk. Further monitoring is being conducted by space weather agencies regarding its progress. More info about its weird magnetic orientation here. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. Few plages across the solar surface on the eastern section as well as some moderately large eruptive prominences at the limbs were 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 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 (4:45PM – 5:00PM, March 5, 2019):

Average Temperature: 24.2°C

Average Humidity: 34.5%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 21.5 kph from NW

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 1003.65 hpa

Average Solar Radiation: 163.5 W/m^2

Average UV Radiation: 319 µW/m^2 (low)