Transcript: In 1830 the German astronomer Heinrich Schwabe started observing sunspots as a hobby. He was an amateur astronomer who spent much of his time observing the Sun. After a decade or so he noticed a regular pattern reappearing in the number and placement of sunspots and he proposed the solar cycle. The solar cycle lasts twenty-two years, and it’s composed of two complete eleven year cycles of sunspots. In a cycle of sunspots at the minimum few sunspots appear, and most of them are within ten degrees of the Sun’s equator. After a couple of years the number of spots increases, and most of them are found at relatively high latitudes thirty degrees from the Sun’s equator. Near the maximum many sunspots appear, and they are at latitudes of around twenty degrees from the Sun’s equator. As eleven years from the minimum approaches the number again reduces towards the minimum, and once again the latitude is within ten degrees of the Sun’s equator.