One way to track the solar cycle is by counting the number of sunspots, which are dark, cooler patches on the Sun’s surface.

Has the Sun’s activity increased or decreased in the last few years? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated ...

Scientists have long studied the sun, our solar system’s life-giving star, trying to understand its behavior, solar flares, and how it affects Earth. While we all rely on the sun for warmth and light, ...

While the Sun’s solar flares strongly correlate with sunspots, observations of more than 14,000 other stars show this is not generally the case.

For two nights, dazzling auroras delighted sky-gazers in unexpected places, including in the US as far south as Florida. The cause: dual solar storms unleashed by the sun reaching Earth. A severe ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The intensity of the Sun’s activity ebbs and flows across years, but also across decades—a behavior that scientists haven’t quite figured out yet. At ...

New research suggests that the unexpected intensity of the ongoing solar maximum may be partly tied to a lesser-known, 100-year solar cycle. If true, solar activity could spike further in the coming ...

Solar activity, manifested primarily through sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections, has long influenced both the near-space environment and terrestrial systems. Over millennia, variations ...