SUNSPOT MONITORING – MAY 13, 2020

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, May 13, 2020.

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

The Sun remained spotless and generally inactive over the past 24 hours, extending to its 11th consecutive day. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. Not much significant activities going on with the Sun lately, except with the Sun exhibiting quiescent prominences, particularly some moderately huge ones at the northeastern and southeastern limbs, 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 (5:25 PM – 5:50 PM, May 13, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 31.4°C

Average Humidity: 22.5%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 34.75 kph from WNW

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 996.4hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 199.5 W/m^2

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