The Quiet Sun

Instapundit links to a Science Alert article with photos taken in broad daylight by photographer Rainee Colacurcio, showing the International Space Station with the sun as backdrop. Per the photos, there are no sunspots in evidence. About this lack, the article writes:

Without a sunspot to speak of, the ISS stands out against this strangely uniform background as the only blemish on the star's surface, because we're currently in a solar minimum - a deeply quiet phase of the Sun's mysterious 11-year cycle.

Even so, the Sun has been particularly quiet lately, and Colacurcio's image captures this exceptionally well.

"For reasons not yet fully understood, the number of sunspots occurring during both the previous and current solar minima have been unusually low," states APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day).

COTTonLINE adds that periods of low-to-no sunspot activity are most often associated with periods of global cooling, labeled when extreme as Maunder Minimums (Minima if you're a purist). The so-called "little ice age" lasting from the 16th to 18th century was one such.