Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, November 8, 2018.

The sky was mostly clear with light to moderate winds making the seeing and transparency average at the time these images were taken.

Generally very low solar activity has persisted. After several spotless days, a single sunspot was seen to have emerged at the encircled location; recently designated as Catania 1 by SIDC.  No significant flaring activity was recorded.  The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 1.  Few eruptive and quiescent prominences at the limbs, as well as some extended filaments mostly at the Sun’s northern hemisphere was 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 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)