Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, October 23, 2018.
The sky was mostly clear (with some passing haze/light clouds mostly at the western sky) with light to moderate winds making the seeing and transparency average to poor at the time these images were taken. Only half of the Sun’s disk was captured in H-alpha as light clouds passed across, obstructing the view afterwards.
The Sun is still spotless and relatively inactive as generally quiet solar activity persisted over the past 24 hours. No significant flaring activity was recorded by space weather agencies. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 0. Other solar feature observed was a huge eruptive prominence situated at the northwestern limb 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. 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)
