SUNSPOT MONITORING – MAY 22, 2021

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, May 21, 2021.

The sky was clear with moderate breeze which provided good transparency but average seeing at the time these images were taken. 

Solar activity has remained at very low levels over the past 24 hours. The lone visible sunspot group AR2824 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Cso/beta) exhibited some re-development of small trailer spots and produced several C-class and M-class solar flares throughout the monitoring period. Another sunspot group was seen rotating into Earth-view from the eastern limb (encircled; undesignated at this point). The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 14.

Enhanced plages at the trailer section of AR2824, several small quiescent prominences at the NW, SE and SW limbs, and were the other noteworthy solar features distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at low to moderate levels with chances of solar flares of B-class to C-class (possibly up to isolated M-class) intensity, mainly from AR2824 in the next few 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. For H-alpha imagery, the equipment used are Lunt 60mm H-alpha solar telescope, and QHYCCD 290III mono camera; all mounted on Skywatcher EQ6 pro mount 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)

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