A lack of sunspots may mean that the sun has reached the bottom of its 11-year cycle of activity.
Images from NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite show that the sun is nearly free of sunspots, indicating it may have reached the lowest point of the current solar cycle.
The 11-year solar cycle is marked by two extremes, solar minimum and solar maximum.
During solar minimum, sunspot and solar flare activity diminishes and often does not occur for days at a time.
When spots begin to appear on the sun once again, scientists can confirm that the sun is heading into a new season of increasing activity.
At the cycle's peak, the sun is continually peppered with spots, and solar flares hurl massive clouds of charged gas into space, sometimes toward Earth.
Such solar storms can disrupt satellite and ground-based high-frequency communications, and have also been known to disrupt power grids.