SUNSPOT MONITORING – MAY 6, 2021

No sunspot monitoring posts were issued from May 2-5, 2021, due to unfavorable weather conditions prevailed on those dates.

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, May 6, 2021.

The sky was mostly clear with light breeze which provided good transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken. 

The Sun remained in its spotless and inactive state on its 4th consecutive day (from May 2  when AR2818 and AR2820 departed from Earth-view, based on records from numerous space weather agencies). No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0.

Nothing much significant going on with the Sun lately except for few short stable filaments at the extreme SSW and NNE quadrant and small quiescent prominences at the limbs as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at very low levels with chances of solar flares of B-class to C-class intensity, mainly from the upper-mentioned active sunspot regions as they approach the SW limb. 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)

Weather Data (7:50 AM – 8:10 AM, May 6, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 26.0°C

Average Humidity: 91.33%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 3.73 kph from ESE

Average Cloud Cover: 5%

Average Air Pressure: 1000.33 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 335.0 W/m^2

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