SUNSPOT MONITORING – OCTOBER 13, 2021

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, October 13, 2021.

The sky was clear with light to moderate breeze which provided good transparency but average 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-gamma) continues to exhibit gradual shrinkage of its companion spots while its large leader spot remaining intact. Only a few minor non-Earth-directed B-class solar flares were recorded by space weather agencies throughout the monitoring period; peaked at B7.0-class intensity from AR2882. Meanwhile, a new small enhanced active region is seen developing beside AR2882 (encircled, undesignated at the moment). The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 18.

Other solar features observed were some small quiescent and huge eruptive prominences at the limbs, the enhanced plages associated with AR2822 and other small sunspot regions, and few short stable filaments within the vicinity of AR2882 and at the Sun’s extreme southern hemisphere, 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 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 13, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 37.57°C

Average Humidity: 13.67%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 19.87 kph from NNW

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 1008.0 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 67.67 W/m^2

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