Mystery of why Neptune’s clouds have disappeared finally answered

Neptune has long been known to have white clouds circling it, but images of the furthest planet in the solar system have shown this changing over time - the most recent image, taken by the Hubble Telescope in 2020, shows no clouds at all.

Astronomers have now uncovered a link between the planet’s shifting cloud abundance and the 11-year solar cycle, in which the waxing and waning of the sun’s entangled magnetic fields drives solar activity, according to Nasa.

This discovery is based on three decades of Neptune observations captured by Nasa’s Hubble Telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, as well as data from the Lick Observatory in California.