Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, October 13, 2018.

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

Two active regions are currently present in the Sun’s disk. AR2724 (Bxo/beta) decayed its trailer spot from yesterday; produced few B-class flares based on space weather agency records, otherwise unchanged in spot structure. Another new small sunspot group AR2725 was designated recently (based on imaging time), situated beside AR2724; with a tiny sunspot with surrounding faculae.  The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 22.  H-alpha imagery reveals fairly large filaments and plages associated with AR2724 and AR2725 across the Sun’s disk, as well as huge eruptive prominences mostly at the western limb.

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 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)