人类观测太阳的历史极长：古巴比伦人与中国人早已在黏土板上记录太阳黑子与日食；17世纪望远镜出现后，Galileo Galilei、Christoph Scheiner 与 Johannes Fabricius 将其对准太阳，发现黑斑缓慢穿过太阳表面。19世纪的光谱学进一步揭示太阳成分，Pierre Janssen 与 Norman Lockyer 在太阳光谱中发现地球上未知的谱线，Lockyer 将其命名为 helium，而 Sir William Ramsay 又过了 27 年才在地球上分离并确认它。

20世纪初，George Ellery Hale 指出太阳黑子并非污点，而是磁暴，并且与 11 年太阳活动周期起伏相关；Bernard Lyot 于 1930 年发明日冕仪，使科学家无需等待日食即可研究日冕。自 1950 年代起，航天时代让卫星与探测器能够直接测量太阳风和日冕物质抛射；SOHO 自 1995 年持续监测，SDO 于 2010 年加入，Parker Solar Probe 则在 2021 年首次穿越日冕，并在 2024 年完成迄今人造物体距离恒星最近的一次飞掠。

现代观测不断强化对太阳剧烈活动的认识：1859 年 9 月 1 日，Richard Carrington 记录到一次异常增亮，17 小时后极光南下至 Cuba，西方世界电报系统大范围失灵甚至起火，这成为首个有文献记载、与太阳耀斑相关的地磁暴案例。尽管分辨率与覆盖范围持续提升，关于日冕为何比下方表面高出数百倍温度、太阳周期由什么驱动、以及耀斑如何触发等核心问题仍未解开。

Human observation of the Sun has a very long history: ancient Babylonians and Chinese already recorded sunspots and solar eclipses on clay tablets; after the telescope appeared in the 17th century, Galileo Galilei, Christoph Scheiner, and Johannes Fabricius pointed it at the Sun and saw dark blemishes moving slowly across the solar surface. In the 19th century, spectroscopy revealed solar composition: Pierre Janssen and Norman Lockyer found spectral lines in the Sun that matched no known element on Earth, Lockyer named the new element helium, and Sir William Ramsay did not isolate and confirm it on Earth until 27 years later.

In the early 20th century, George Ellery Hale showed that sunspots were not blemishes but magnetic storms tied to the 11-year solar cycle, and Bernard Lyot’s 1930 coronagraph let scientists study the corona without waiting for an eclipse. From the 1950s onward, spacecraft enabled direct measurements of the solar wind and coronal mass ejections; SOHO has watched continuously since 1995, SDO joined in 2010, and Parker Solar Probe first flew through the corona in 2021 and made the closest approach by any human-made object to a star in 2024.

Modern observations keep sharpening the picture of solar violence: on September 1, 1859, Richard Carrington recorded an unusual brightening, and 17 hours later auroras reached as far south as Cuba while telegraph systems across the Western world failed and even caught fire, the first documented geomagnetic storm linked to a solar flare. Even with better instruments, major questions remain unresolved, including why the corona is hundreds of times hotter than the surface below it, what drives the solar cycle, and how flares decide to erupt.