Here are today’s solar images taken from Al Sadeem Observatory, September 9, 2017.
The sky was clear but experienced intermittent light to moderate winds, making the seeing and transparency poor at the time these images were taken.
Moderate solar activity was observed over the past 24 hours. Five active regions are currently present on the Sun. AR2673 remained the primary source of much solar activity; produced several moderately strong M-class flares. Since it is now nearing the Sun’s western limb, these flares will not directly affect the Earth’s geomagnetic activity as much as from the past few days.
On the other hand, the other four sunspot groups AR2674 (also approaching the Sun’s western limb), decaying AR2677 (its spots are barely seen in the visible range image), AR2678, and the recently designated AR2679 were magnetically stable and inactive without any significant flaring activity recorded.
The latest sunspot number (based on visual count and Wolf number calculation) is 64.
With this stance, space weather agencies* predict persisting moderate to strong solar activity, with flare intensity ranging from B-class to C-class with a moderate chance of M-class and possibly up to X-class; most likely from AR2673) in the next few days. 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.
*courtesy of Solar Influence Data Center (SIDC), NOAA-Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA-SWPC)
