The sun has gone spotless for the past seven days: Spaceweather.com – Oct.15.2017.

Nevertheless, there has continued to be solar eruptions leading to brilliant aurora on earth:

NO SUNSPOTS, NO PROBLEM: A minor G1-class geomagnetic storm is underway on Oct. 15th. This marks the 5th consecutive day that polar geomagnetic storms have been observed–a remarkable string considering that there are NO SUNSPOTS on the face of the sun. It just goes to show that blank suns can indeed produce stormy space weather. Arctic sky watchers should remain alert for auroras as the solar wind continues to blow faster than 550 km/s. 

In September the number of sunspots went up a bit but the trend for the year shows a continued downturn towards a minimum in the cycle: Sunspot update for September 2017 | Behind The Black

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