SUNSPOT MONITORING – OCTOBER 12, 2021

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, October 12, 2021.

The sky was clear with light breeze (but strong upper-level winds) which provided good transparency but poor seeing at the time these images were taken.

Solar activity is at very low levels over the past 24 hours. The lone visible large sunspot group AR2882 (Cho/beta) continues to exhibit some penumbral shrinkage of its companion spots situated NW of its large leader spot. Meanwhile, AR2883 (Axx/alpha) keeps on gradually decaying while departing from Earth-view as it approaches the NW limb. AR2884 has completely disintegrated. Only a few minor B-class solar flares were produced by the upper mentioned active regions; peaked at B9.0-class intensity from AR2882.  The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 24.

Other solar features observed were some small quiescent prominences at the NW and SW limbs, the enhanced plages associated with AR2822 and other small sunspot regions, and few short stable filaments within the vicinity of AR2882, as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* expect very low to low solar activity to persist with the likelihood of flaring activities up to C-class (possibly up to isolated M-class) intensity in the next few days, mainly from AR2882. 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 (5:00 PM – 5:30 PM, October 12, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 39.23°C

Average Humidity: 10.33%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 4.17 kph from varying directions

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 1006.0 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 79.67 W/m^2

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