Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, October 26, 2020.
The sky was generally clear with intermittent light breeze which provided good transparency and seeing at the time these images were taken.
With the recent departure of AR2776 from Earth-view at the southwestern limb, a newly designated sunspot group AR2778 (Modified Zurich/Mcintosh sunspot configuration: Cai/beta) has rapidly grown in structure and it was the source of few minor B-class solar flares over the past 48 hours. On the other hand, the small enhanced active region spotted in the northern hemisphere has lost most of its pores and did not develop further in structure. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 17. Other noteworthy solar features observed were mostly small quiescent prominences with the exception of a few faint moderately huge ones at the northeastern limb, an elongated eruptive filament at the northern hemisphere, together with enhanced plages associated with AR2778, and the other undeveloped one previously mentioned as distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.
Space weather agencies* forecast solar activity to be at low levels with chances of weak X-ray fluxes or flares up to B-class intensity, mainly from AR2778. 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 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 (4:30 PM – 5:00 PM, October 26, 2020, from NCM Al Wathba Station):
Average Temperature: 34.03°C
Average Humidity: 14.67%
Average Wind Speed and Direction: 7.33 kph from ENE
Average Cloud Cover: 0%
Average Air Pressure: 1002.43 hPa
Average Solar Radiation: 136.0 W/m^2
