Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, November 1, 2019.
The sky was clear with moderate winds which provided good transparency but average seeing at the time these images were taken.
After 28 consecutive days of spotlessness, the Sun exhibited a newly emerged active region at the far southeastern section of the Sun’s disk with an inverse magnetic polarity that belongs to Solar Cycle 25 according to latest space weather agency analyses. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 11.  A huge eruptive hedgerow prominence, as well as a pillar-shaped one at the opposite regions of the Sun’s chromosphere was distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery. The enhanced plage associated with the newly emerged sunspot group, as well as few moderately huge eruptive prominences at the limbs which are all minor and non-Earth directed, were clearly 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. 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 (4:50 PM – 5:15 PM, November 1, 2019):
Average Temperature: 31.1°C
Average Humidity: 54%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 23.95 kph from N
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 1000.05 hpa
Average Solar Radiation: 68.05 W/m^2
Average UV Radiation: 30 µW/m^2 (low)
