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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows off its capabilities closer to home with its first image of Neptune. Not only has Webb captured the clearest view of this distant planet’s rings in more than 30 years, but its cameras reveal the ice giant in a whole new light. Most striking in Webb’s new image is the crisp view of the planet’s rings – some of which have not been detected since NASA’s Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune during its flyby in 1989. In addition to several bright, narrow rings, the Webb image clearly shows Neptune’s fainter...

Neptune’s moons are ...all are named for gods of the sea, or for the children of Poseidon (which include Triton, Proteus, Depsina and Thalassa), minor Greek water dieties (Naiad and Nereid) or Nereids , the water nymphs in Greek mythology (Halimede, Galatea, Neso, Sao, Laomedeia and Psamathe). Neptune’s Regular Moons are those located closest to the planet and which follow circular prograde orbits that lie in the planet’s equatorial plane. They are, in order of distance from Neptune: Naiad , Thalassa , Despina, Galatea, Larissa , S/2004 N 1, and Proteus. All but the outer two are within Neptune-synchronous orbit......

The strangest vessel made its formal premiere Thursday on San Francisco Bay, and it was a sight to see: It looked like a spider, wiggled over the waves like a porpoise, and was fast as the wind. It is named the Proteus, after a Greek god of the sea, and is the first of what might be a long line of wave adaptive modular vessels -- WAM-V for short -- developed by Ugo Conti, an engineer and inventor. Conti calls it "the prototype of a new class of vessel." Using technology developed by Conti's El Cerrito Marine Advanced Research Inc.,...

Sightings - A pontoon vessel passes through Ilwaco, Wash., but those involved with the strange boat aren't talking It looked like Spiderman's own ride, a 99-foot mystery craft resembling a monstrous metallic spider riding on two pontoons. It emerged from a fog bank to dock at the Port of Ilwaco, Wash., then left the next day with the crew refusing to talk. Even as answers on who built the boat are now surfacing, the vessel remains an enigma. Pictures of the craft shoot across cyberspace while chat sites ponder just what the boat could be used for. But the inventor...