After almost four years of being covered dark spots like an acne-covered teenager, the sun’s face has suddenly become smooth for consecutive days, suggesting that solar activity is declining. But while this surprisingly “spotless” display is a sign of things to come, it’s still too early to let our guard down, experts warn.
On Sunday (February 22), there were zero visible sunspots on the Earth-facing side of the Sun for the first time since June 8, 2022, Live Science’s sister site That was reported by Space.com. This “spotless day” ended a 1,335-day streak of consecutive sunspot sightings in which there has been a constant and looming threat that one of these dark spots might launch a potentially dangerous solar storm which may later hit Earth.
The blemish-free solar disc was surprising given that we have only recently emerged from it solar maximum – the peak in the sun’s approximately 11-year solar cycle, when sunspots litter the solar surface and constantly spit out solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
In recent weeks we have also been hit by a major solar radiation event and witnessed one of the most explosive sunspots of the current solar cycle, making the sudden reversal even more puzzling.
But don’t let the Sun’s facade fool you, because the current cycle (solar cycle 25) is far from over, and we’re almost guaranteed to see a few more space weather events before our home star transitions to a more permanent state of spotless.
“Solar Cycle 25 still has many years left in it,” wrote Spaceweather.com representatives. “However, these spotless days tell us that the current cycle is slowing down,” they added.
Counting sunspots
Sunspots occur when the Sun’s magnetic field is unstable, which happens in and around solar maximum, when the sun’s magnetic field reverses completely . This makes the dark spots a key indicator of the progression of the solar cycle.
The sudden and sharp increase in sunspots in early 2022 was the first clue that solar maximum would come earlier than official forecasts initially suggested, which proved to be the case. The peak of solar cycle 25 (SC25) has also been much more active than expected, with the average number of sunspots climbing to 215.5 in August 2024 — highest monthly total in more than 23 years.
Over the past few years, we’ve also seen one record number of X-class flares explode from sunspots (partly due to advances in solar observation technology), and have been hit by several large solar storms, including the famous The Mother’s Day storm in 2024seam briefly disrupted GPS technology and triggered some of most widespread northern lights in centuries.
Solar maximum likely to end sometime in early 2025 and despite recent increases in solar activity, the sun is beginning to set. For example, there was an average of 112.6 sunspots in January, which is almost half of the 2024 peak, according to Weather forecast center for space travel. But even considering this downward trend, it’s still very surprising to see consecutive spotless days so soon in the current cycle.
Normally, we have to wait for the Sun’s weakest phase, called solar minimum, to see consecutive spotless days. For example, there were more than 700 spot-free days between 2018 and 2020, around the last solar minimum, according to Spaceweather.com.
More to come
Several experts, including Scott McIntosh — VP of space operations at Lynker Space and former deputy director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, who was one of the first solar physicists to accurately predict SC25 — has previously told LiveScience that solar activity may remain unusually high in the years following solar maximum.
Recent research from Lynker Space has also revealed that the years after solar maximum, called the “combat zone”, can be even more chaotic than a cycle peakdue to instability between different parts of the Sun’s recently reversed magnetic field: “The potential for large, dangerous geomagnetic storms in the next few years is very real,” McIntosh told LiveScience in December 2024.
The magnetic configuration of sunspots is more important than their size or frequency in determining how risky they are, meaning the next big storm could theoretically come from almost any of them, according to The Planetary Society.
The worst-case scenario is that we get hit by a superstorm on the level of The Carrington incident of 1859 — the most extreme space weather event in recorded history, which erupted during a solar cycle similar to SC25. Such a storm has capacity for wipe out almost all satellites orbiting the Earth and cause significant damage to the energy infrastructure on the planet’s surface.
ONE recent studypublished in October 2025, estimated that there is about a 5% chance of such an event occurring within the next decade. We already have that too set several Carrignton-sized sunspots during the current cycle, although neither has been as active.
All of this goes to show that, just like a good book, we shouldn’t judge the sun solely by its cover.
Sun quiz: How well do you know our home star?
