Solar cycle 25 has begun
In the past one and a half years, the sun has been rather dull: hardly a sunspot covered its surface, hardly a solar flare hurled radiation and particles into space. As observational data now show, for the last nine months solar activity has been slowly picking up again. Already in December 2019, our star passed its activity minimum, an event which occurs approximately every eleven years. This confirms predictions made by the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel, an international panel of experts organized by NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), in March last year. The panel, whose members include Robert Cameron from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, expects the sun to be as tame in the now beginning solar cycle 25 as it has been in the previous eleven years.