| 1613 | Galileo Galilei uses sunspot observations to demonstrate the rotation of the Sun. |
| 1619 | Johannes Kepler postulates a solar wind to explain the direction of comet tails. |
| 1802 | William Wollaston observes dark lines in the solar spectrum. |
| 1814 | Joseph Fraunhofer systematically studies the dark lines in the solar spectrum. |
| 1834 | Hermann Helmholtz proposes gravitational contraction as the energy source for the Sun. |
| 1843 | Heinrich Schwabe announces his discovery of the sunspot cycle and estimates its period to be about ten years. |
| 1852 | Edward Sabine shows that sunspot number is correlated with geomagnetic field variations. |
| 1859 | Richard Carrington discovers solar flares. |
| 1860 | Gustav Kirchoff and Robert Bunsen discover that each element has its own distinct set of spectral lines and use this fact to explain the solar dark lines. |
| 1861 | F.G.W. Sporer discovers the variation of sunspot latitudes during a solar cycle. |
| 1863 | Richard Carrington discovers the differential nature of solar rotation. |
| 1868 | Pierre-Jules-Cesar Janssen and Norman Lockyer discover an unidentified yellow line in solar prominence spectra and suggest it comes from a new element which they name "helium''. |
| 1893 | Edward Maunder discovers the 1645-1715 Maunder sunspot minimum. |
| 1904 | Edward Maunder plots the first sunspot "butterfly diagram''. |
| 1906 | Karl Schwarzschild explains solar limb darkening. |
| 1908 | George Hale discovers the Zeeman splitting of spectral lines from sunspots. |
| 1942 | J.S. Hey detects solar radio waves. |
| 1949 | Herbert Friedman detects solar X-rays. |
| 1960 | Robert Leighton, Robert Noyes, and George Simon discover solar five-minute oscillations by observing the Doppler shifts of solar dark lines. |
| 1961 | H. Babcock proposes the magnetic coiling sunspot theory. |
| 1970 | Roger Ulrich, John Leibacher, and Robert Stein deduce from theoretical solar models that the interior of the Sun could act as a resonant acoustic cavity. |
| 1975 | Franz-Ludwig Deubner makes the first accurate measurements of the period and horizontal wavelength of the five-minute solar oscillations. |