The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory is a major partner in the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, which is a group of four telescopes on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory that photograph the sun in 10 different wavelength bands, or colors, once every 10 seconds. [...more]
Keeper Tracey Barnes talks about Billie Jean, an Andean bear, and her two new cubs at the Smithsonian's National Zoo. [...more]
One, possibly two, red-billed hornbill chicks hatched in early May at the National Zoo’s Bird House. Red-billed hornbills are found in savanna and woodland areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Due to this species’ peculiar nesting behavior, it was only recently that keepers have been able to confirm one chick. “When the female of this species is satisfied [...] [...more]
New world megafauna such as mammoths, bison and camelids that were alive at the end of the Pleistocene epoch (some 13,000 years ago) would have produced massive amounts of methane-rich flatulence and belching, thanks to the cellulose-digesting microbes in their guts. [...more]
When it comes to brains, is bigger better? Can the tiny brain of a newly hatched spiderling handle problems as adeptly as the brain of a larger adult spider? [...more]
Roy Clarke, curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, is shown in 1977 with the Old Woman Meteorite, the second largest meteorite ever discovered in the United States. It was found in March 1976 in the Mojave Desert some 167 miles east of Los Angeles, by two prospectors searching for a lost Spanish Conquistador gold mine rumored to be there. In September 1980, the Smithsonian sent most of the meteorite back to California to be placed on display at the Desert Discovery Center in Barstow. (Photo courtesy Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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