The Sky Watchers’ Association has formed its Solar Division (SD-SWA) to encourage amateur solar observation activities in India. Most of the amateurs in our country can not afford to take part in scientifically productive pursuits such as Variable star observation, Binary star observation, comet hunting etc. due to limited resources, while they have the ability and eagerness to do serious observations. Keeping this restriction in mind, Solar Division-SWA has taken up a project of counting Sunspot numbers, which can be done by an amateur or even a beginner, who has only a small telescope available. Besides the simplicity, this project also has a great theoretical and applied significance. The appearance of sunspots on solar surface is the most well known manifestation of solar activity, which is thought to be one aspect of stellar mechanism as well as stellar evolution. Interestingly, solar activity undergoes a periodic change in amplitudes after about eleven years; precisely the period varies from nine to twelve and half years. The moment when the sunspots form profusely, activity is maximum, symmetrically at the tail of the period, solar activity goes through a minimum and few sunspots are visible.

In 1809 AD G. Sporer and E.M. Maunder pointed out that, in ancient times the sunspot cycle actually changed even more drastically than the annual mean sunspot numbers from 1973 to 1980 AD. During the period of seventy years from 1646 to 1715 AD sunspot cycle and sunspots themselves almost disappeared. There was hardly any sunspot on the solar surface, called the Maunder minimum. There were at least two more pronounced earlier minimum. One is the Sporer minimum (1460 - 1550 AD) and the other is the Medieval minimum (1280 -1350 AD) having the duration of about ninety and seventy years, respectively. Sunspot cycle probably spends a significant fraction of its time in an enigma mode like the Maunder, Sporer, and Medieval minimum, which it passed in recent times. Thus, it is clear that sunspot cycle does not make a very good clock, that is, Sun by no means regular in its quasi-periodic sunspot and solar activity cycle. A period of eleven years is generally assigned to it simply by plotting the observational data available for the past twenty cycles only. Thus, we need further continuous and careful observation of sunspot cycle to understand what makes the sunspot cycle so irregular in phase amplitude variation By counting the numbers of sunspots each day, taking an average and recording the value from one year to the next, one may find out the period of a cycle. However, it is not so easy for professionals. They hardly get the availability of the telescopes on regular basis for a particular project. Researchers from various fields always keep the observatories busy with their several different projects. That is why researchers engaged in this field of solar physics highly depend on the collective data obtained by the amateurs. Major advantage of such data procurement can be understood if one considers the different climatic conditions of the various regions at a particular moment. In fact, a fair complete daily record can only be obtained from a number of observers, many in different parts of the world recording the sun's features on clear days available.