Albedo and auroral display question please help.?

Just a comment to the otherwise excellent Zarn's answer: We don't need satellites to observe the sun's activity. The 11 years cycle can easily be observed by counting the so-called solar spots. This has been done for a long time with simply a smoked gl. Radio amateurs follow very closely those sun spot counts on a daily basis because they determine not only the aurora borealis, or australis, but also the different layers of the ionosphere that reflects the radio waves on the medium and short wavebands. This is how I managed, years ago, to talk from Norway to New Zealand. I still don't know if my signal went over the north or the south pole, though.