If he’s an astronomy prof I’m surprised he doesn’t already know about the low sunspot cycle although many profs I knew in my college days didn’t do much reading outside their textbook.
There are occasional sunspots. None today.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/realtime-update.html
Oh no. He’s really into it but just because you know activity is low doesn’t mean you can’t get lucky. I think he was holding out great hopes that we’d see one.