Solar Activity August 2026, report by Andrew Wood

During August I was able to observe the solar photosphere on twelve mornings at 10am. This was over two distinct groups as after Aug 12 weather and a trip away meant I could not observe again until August 24, and I was home on 3 more sunny mornings at the end of the month. Figures 1a and 1b show the sunspot activity.

Figure 1a shows that sunspot activity started strongly at the beginning of August then dropped constantly, until by Aug 10 there were no sunspots at all.

Figure 1a: Graphic representation of sunspot activity from Aug 4-12, 2026, through a 127mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope and an 8x50 finder-scope, both fitted with full-aperture solar filters. The Relative Sunspot Number (RSN) is calculated by multiplying the number of groups by 10 and adding the total number of sunspots.

Figure 1b: Graphic representation of sunspot activity during from Aug 24-31, 2026.

Figure 2 shows that all of the activity was in the western hemisphere of the sun on Aug 4. As these spots rotated out of sight no more were replaced, until Aug 12 when some groups became visible in the east. This continued for the remainder of the month so that by month’s end the activity was nearly as strong as at the beginning, as shown in Figure 1b.

Figure 2: Drawing of the solar photosphere from Aug 4, 2026.

Prior to a total solar eclipse in Spain on Aug 13, an image of the Sun taken by Toner Stevenson, Figure 3, indicates that solar activity was indeed increasing after the low of Aug 10 and 11.

Figure 3: Image of the Sun prior to a total solar eclipse in Spain on Aug 13, 2026 (Toner Stevenson)

Figure 2 shows that there was one filament observed on Aug 4. Observations of Prominences, Filaments and Plages were observed through a 40mm Hydrogen-alpha telescope. The Hydrogen-alpha observations for August are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1: Summary of Hydrogen-alpha observations of the solar photosphere during August 2026.

Recorded data was submitted to the Solar Section of the British Astronomical Association Solar – British Astronomical Association.

Reported by Andrew Wood