Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, March 8, 2019.
The sky was clear but with intermittent moderate winds which provided good transparency but poor seeing at the time these images were taken.
The lone visible sunspot group AR2734 experienced structural decay on its trailer spots with a slight growth on its remaining header spots. It produced an Earth-directed C-class solar flare early morning of this day, according to space weather agency reports. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 11. Other observed solar features were some moderately huge prominences at the limbs mostly at the western portion of the limbs, as well as still-frame of the post-flare activity in AR2734 and a small plage at the southern hemisphere.
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 (possibly isolated C-class) intensity mainly from AR2734. The extent of the frequency and intensity of the Sun’s activity will highly depend on the magnetic flux fluctuations happening in the visible ARs in the coming days. 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 – 5:05PM, March 8, 2019):
Average Temperature: 23.8°C
Average Humidity: 37.5%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 27.55 kph from NNW
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 1004.95 hpa
Average Solar Radiation: 167.16 W/m^2
Average UV Radiation: 319.5 µW/m^2 (low)
