Astronomers have been puzzling over a mystery on Neptune, and now they think they have unlocked its secret.

The ice giant’s ghostly, cirrus-like clouds largely disappeared four years ago. Today, just a patch hovers over the planet’s south pole.

Thanks to an analysis of nearly three decades’ worth of Neptune observations captured by three space telescopes, scientists have determined the ice giant’s diminished clouds may indicate that shifts in their abundance are in sync with the solar cycle, according to a recent study published in the journal Icarus.

A newly discovered star system is breaking records — and helping scientists unravel the mysteries of an extreme type of planet known as hot Jupiters. In a paper published Aug. 14 in the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers describe how the system could help further our understanding of worlds beyond our solar system.

The binary system, located 1,400 light-years away, consists of a “white dwarf” and a “brown dwarf.” White dwarfs are the crystalline cores of large stars that ran out of fuel and collapsed under their own gravity.

Black holes have a speed limit. When two black holes collide, the larger black hole created in the merger can be blasted off by the energy of the collision, and now we know the highest speed possible from this recoil process.

One of the great mysteries in astronomy is how galaxies form. At issue is why stars gather into “island universes” rather than spreading out evenly through the universe.

One clue comes from the observation that most galaxies contain massive black holes at their centers. That has led to the proposal that galaxies form around black holes which act as seeds for this process.

The idea of gravity as we know it has been around for a long time. More than 300 years ago, Isaac Newton first shared his theory of gravitation, describing how massive objects are attracted to each other. Then, around a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein refined and expanded upon Newton’s ideas to create the theory of relativity—explaining gravity as the way objects, especially at the extremes across the universe, warp the fabric of space around them.

Sun activity has been low in recent days. But we’re currently heading toward another peak in the sun’s 11-year cycle of activity. And Solar Cycle 25 has already proven surprising. The maximum activity was predicted to occur in 2025. But solar activity has already exceeded that predicted maximum. So we’ve been seeing more geomagnetic storms, more auroral displays, and more potentially hazardous conditions for satellites in low-Earth orbit.