Where are we in the solar cycle?
The Sun runs on a roughly 11-year cycle — quiet minimum, stormy maximum, slow decline — and everything this site tracks rides it: how many CMEs launch, how often the aurora comes south, whether the high radio bands open. This page is the zoom-out: the whole cycle, live, with NOAA's forecast and history's great storms pinned where they happened.
1The cycle, drawn
Data: NOAA SWPC solar-cycle indices (monthly, 1749→present) and the official Cycle 25 prediction. The smoothed curve ends ~6 months back — that's the 13-month averaging window, not missing data.
2How to read it honestly
A maximum is only official in hindsight. The peak is defined on the 13-month smoothed sunspot number, so it can't be declared until about a year after it happens. The smoothed curve here peaked in late 2024 and has fallen since — which is why the honest phrasing is "most likely past maximum," not a date carved in stone.
The decline is where the monsters live. Activity fades over ~5–6 years, and some of history's worst storms struck well after their cycle's peak — the Halloween 2003 superstorms came two and a half years into Cycle 23's decline, and big coronal holes (fast-wind aurora machines) actually favor the declining phase. Past peak ≠ show's over.
Cycle 25 beat its forecast. It was predicted to be as weak as Cycle 24 (the century's feeblest); instead its smoothed peak came in ~40% higher — the reason the 2024–26 aurora seasons made so many headlines, including the Gannon superstorm.
What it means for you: aurora chasers still have years of chances, thinning gradually — get on the alert list and you won't miss the good nights. Radio operators: the high bands (15–10 m) stay usable while the flux holds above ~115, then fade toward minimum around 2030–31. And the daily numbers this page zooms out from live in the tracker header.
3Deeper
The cycle is magnetic: the Sun's field winds up, erupts through the surface as sunspot pairs, and flips polarity at each maximum — a full magnetic cycle is two sunspot cycles, ~22 years. Sunspot counting began in 1749, making this humanity's longest-running scientific data series; cycles are numbered from 1755. The famous storms pinned above each link to their story and replay, and the science page covers how storms are modeled and validated.