Predicting the Sun’s SOLAR CYCLE

The Sun is an active place; sometimes it’s calm, while at other times it’s far stormier. But is there any way that we can forecast our nearest star’s activity? Our current understanding of the Sun comes from centuries of observations. Naked-eye observations of sunspots were first made in ancient times. either during cloudy conditions, after sunrise or before sunset – a dangerous practice that risked serious damage to eyesight, even blindness, despite reducing the Sun’s glare enough to make sunspots visible.

Since the mid-1800s, long-term records of sunspots have been made by many scientists and amateur astronomers, revealing that the number of sunspots varies cyclically over an 11-year period known as the solar cycle.

Sighting sunspots

There is still some controversy surrounding who first observed sunspots, but the German medical student Johannes Fabricius was the first to publish his scientific findings. In 1611, after taking his first telescopic observations of the Sun, Fabricius teamed up