Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, October 15, 2020.

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

The newly designated sunspot group AR2776 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Cro/beta) grew out and expanded in structure slightly but has been generally weak and dormant over the past 24 hours. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 14. Nothing much going on with the Sun lately except for few tiny faint quiescent prominences at the limbs and the well-defined plage associated with AR2776 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 15, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 35.7°C

Average Humidity: 11%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 6.65 kph from NNE

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 998.95 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 99.5 W/m^2