When is solar maximum?

Solar Cycle 25 most likely reached maximum around late 2024, when the smoothed sunspot number peaked near 161. But a maximum is only official about a year after the fact, because it's defined on a 13-month smoothed average. As of 2026 the Sun is in the early declining phase: past the likely peak, still far above minimum, and historically still capable of major storms.

Is solar maximum over? Can I still see the aurora?

The peak has most likely passed, but the aurora window has not closed. Activity declines over several years, not months, and the declining phase historically produces some of the strongest individual storms. The Halloween 2003 superstorms struck two and a half years after Cycle 23's peak. Expect years of continued storm and aurora opportunities, gradually thinning.

Where are we in the solar cycle?

The Sun runs on a roughly 11-year cycle: quiet minimum, stormy maximum, slow decline. 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.

Loading the cycle data from NOAA…

1The cycle, drawn

monthly sunspot number 13-month smoothed NOAA forecast famous storms

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.

2The cycle, drawn by eruptions

Ten years of coronal mass ejections replayed on an unrolled Sun, with the cycle chart drawing itself underneath. Each dot flares when its CME leaves the Sun and fades over the next few weeks; the bars count launches per month against the sunspot curve. One caveat on the bars: from about 2022 NASA's catalogue began logging minor eruptions alongside the big ones, so part of the cycle 25 climb is more complete bookkeeping, not only a busier Sun. It starts when it scrolls into view. Hover a dot for the eruption in the coronagraph, click to pin, space bar to pause.

speed

The same cycle, one Sun per year. Each globe is the Sun unrolled, the Earth-facing half lit in the middle, with one dot for every coronal mass ejection NASA catalogued that year at the point it launched from, sized by speed. The minimum years are nearly bald, and what little erupted hugs the equator. Then the launches multiply and spread toward 30° as the cycle climbs to its 2024 to 2025 peak. The dashed globes are the next five years: a forecast of the decline to the coming minimum, built from NOAA's predicted sunspot numbers.

Data: NASA DONKI cone-model fits, 2016 onward. Forecast globes: the yearly launch count follows NOAA's predicted sunspot number through a straight-line fit to the observed years 2020 to 2025, and each forecast year's dots are a resample of the past year whose sunspot number is closest, with a little jitter. NOAA's forecast ends in December 2030, so 2031 carries its final months forward as the approaching minimum. It is a picture of the expected pace and spread, not a prediction of any eruption. The full ten-year map and the CME butterfly diagram are on Where the Sun shoots.

3How 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.

4Deeper

The cycle is magnetic: the Sun's field winds up, erupts through the surface as sunspot pairs, and flips polarity at each maximum, so 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.

Related: Where the Sun shoots, ten years of CME launch points on an unrolled Sun, with the cycle's quiet years hugging the equator.

← Back to the tracker