SUNSPOT MONITORING – SEPTEMBER 6, 2021

Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, September 6, 2021.

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

There are 4 small sunspot groups currently visible on the Sun’s disk. Namely AR2863 (Cso/beta)  AR2864 (Dao/beta), AR2866 (Dai/beta), and AR2868 (Dso/beta) exhibited significant growth in structure and attained a more complex magnetic complexity, but only produced weak B-class solar flares over the past 24 hours. Something worth mentioning is the filament eruption followed by a B7.9-class solar flare from post-AR2865 which has decayed into plage. The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 85. 

Scattered enhanced plages associated with the upper mentioned sunspot groups, some short stable filaments across the Sun’s northern hemisphere, and few small quiescent prominences particularly at the SE and NW limbs, with additional of a faint eruptive arch-shaped prominence at the NE limb, were the other solar features distinctively captured in H-alpha imagery.

Space weather agencies* expect low solar activity to persist with chances of B-class to C-class solar flares in the next few 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. For H-alpha imagery, the equipment used are Lunt 60mm H-alpha solar telescope, and QHYCCD 290III 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 – 5:30 PM, September 6, 2021, from NCM Al Wathba Station):

Average Temperature: 40.0°C

Average Humidity: 23.67%

Average Wind Speed and Direction: 20.9 kph from NNW

Average Cloud Cover: 0%

Average Air Pressure: 1000.0 hPa

Average Solar Radiation: 191.33 W/m^2

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