SUNSPOT MONITORING – OCTOBER 14, 2020

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, October 14, 2020.

The sky was mostly clear with intermittent light to moderate breeze which provided good transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.

Solar activity has remained generally very low over the past 24 hours. AR2775 has completely decayed to a plage.  Meanwhile, a new small developing active region (encircled, undesignated at the moment) has recently rotated into Earth-view from the eastern limb. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 11. Small enhanced plages associated with the upper mentioned sunspot regions, and few quiescent prominences (with an exception of a moderately huge one at the northwestern limb) were distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at very low levels with chances of weak X-ray fluxes or flares up to B-class intensity. Close monitoring is being conducted by numerous space weather agencies for any significant development, specifically on the new developing sunspot group.

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 QHYCCD290III 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 – 5:20 PM, October 14, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 35.7°C

Average Humidity: 8%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 11.35 kph from NNE

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 998.65 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 105.5 W/m^2

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