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LiveScience
LiveScience
Elizabeth Howell

One of Neptune's 16 moons is not like the others, James Webb telescope finds — and it could be key to fully understanding the solar system

A composite image with a blue sphere planet in the background with a circular zoom in on a blurry white moon.

One of Neptune's largest moons has stuck around the neighborhood much longer than scientists previously thought — in fact, it may be the sole survivor of the planet's earliest days.

Nereid, Neptune's third-largest moon, is probably the only moon left over from when the ice giant formed early in the solar system's 4.5 billion-year history, a new analysis of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data suggests.

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