The Sun Is Waking Up From a Decades-Long Nap: What It Means for You and the EarthThe Sun seems like a perfectly reliable, unchanging presence in the daytime sky, but it’s not. Solar activity ebbs and flows over time, under the influence of processes we only sort of understand. By tracking the number, size, and composition of sunspots, astronomers can track how active the Sun is at any given time. A century later, a second decline in sunspots known as the Dalton minimum was observed. “All signs were pointing to the Sun going into a prolonged phase of low activity,” lead author Jamie Jasinski explained.