No sunspot monitoring was issued from April 28-30, 2020 due to unfavorable weather conditions.
Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, May 1, 2020.
The sky was partly cloudy with moderate to fresh winds (imaged through a brief sky “window”) which provided average to poor transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.
There are three active sunspot groups existing in the Sun today. First is the departing AR2752 which was reported to have produced a weak B-class flare yesterday, the much-scattered AR2760 at the southwestern quadrant and the smaller AR2763 at the far northern hemisphere. All sunspot groups were decaying in structure, indicating general inactivity. Visible sunspots were not resolved well in the white-light images well due to poor seeing. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 34. Stable plages associated with the upper-mentioned active regions together with few moderately huge prominences, at opposite (northeastern and southwestern) 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 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 (5:15 PM – 5:35 PM, May 1, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 33.65°C
Average Humidity: 40%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 22.5 kph from SE
Average Cloud Cover: 50%
Average Air Pressure: 995.45 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 231.5 W/m^2
