Hubble's radiation damage lags the Solar cycle by several years

Radiation damage to Hubble has been 4.3 years out of phase with the Solar cycle

Radiation damage to the Hubble Space Telescope's CCD detectors has varied over each Solar cycle but several years out of phase with sunspots or coronal mass ejections, according to a paper presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2026. Fits with physically absurd parameters correct more than 99.5% of the damage's effect on image quality, while physically reasonable fits perform worse.