SUNSPOT MONITORING – OCTOBER 21, 2019

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, October 21, 2019.

The sky was clear with moderate winds which provided good transparency but average seeing at the time these images were taken.

Solar activity continues to be generally quiet over the past 48 hours (from the previous monitoring period). No designated active regions currently exist on the Sun’s disk. No significant flaring activity was recorded. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. Not much going on with the Sun lately with only few tiny quiescent prominences at the limbs and short filaments across the near-edge sections of the Sun’s disk as the only visible solar features as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

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 and ZWO120MM CMOS camera 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)

Weather Data (4:45 PM – 5:00 PM, October 21, 2019):

Average Temperature: 32.45°C

Average Humidity: 48%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 27.55 kph from N

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 1000.15 hpa

Average Solar Radiation: 83.52 W/m^2

Average UV Radiation: 40 µW/m^2 (low)

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