The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) PS1 telescope has discovered an asteroid about 150 feet in diameter that will come within 4 million miles of Earth in mid-October.

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The Kepler spacecraft was launched in March of 2009 to study extrasolar planets. One of its major goals is the detection of terrestrial planets in habitable zones.

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Scientists and local dive operators first noticed coral bleaching in the waters surrounding Isla Colon, in Panama’s Bocas del Toro province in July. Smithsonian staff scientist Nancy Knowlton and colleagues documented an extensive bleaching event in late September.

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"This galaxy cluster wins the heavyweight title. It's among the most massive clusters ever found at this distance," said Mark Brodwin, a Smithsonian astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

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This circa 1910 Yup'ik mask from Good News Bay, Alaska--made of driftwood, baleen, feathers, paint and cotton twine--is part of "Infinity of Nations: Art and History in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian," an exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian, opening Saturday, Oct. 23.

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NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centered in the Milky Way--a finding likened in terms of scale to the discovery of a new continent on Earth. The feature, which spans 50,000 light-years, may be the remnant of an eruption from a supersized black hole at the center of our galaxy.

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For a thousand years, Cyprus was divided into at least 10 autonomous states. The inhabitants spoke three languages: Greek, Phoenician, and Eteocypriot, the original language […]

The post Cyprus: Crossroads of Civilizations appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Scarlet Knight, as the glider is called, made nautical history as the first submersible glider to successfully cross the Atlantic Ocean.

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Thepytus carmen, a newly described species of butterfly from Brazil, was recently named in memory of Carmen Lúcia Buck in recognition of the gracious support […]

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For two weeks the team recorded and documented the community’s elders, families and llamas along a pilgrimage of remembrance in Pisaq, Peru.

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The male’s fluke design helps it overcome the drag caused by their long tusks, the scientists determined. The female’s fluke design gives them increased speed for diving while foraging.

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A. sediba was discovered in 2008 in the Malapa Cave at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site located outside Johannesburg.

The post Skeletal casts of early hominin ancestor from Africa donated to National Museum of Natural History appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

But a new census of all dinosaur skeletons unearthed over a large area of Eastern Montana shows that Tyrannosaurus was too numerous to have subsisted solely on the dinosaurs it tracked and killed with its scythe-like teeth.

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Galaxies are sometimes found in large clusters with many hundreds of members. Typically there is a giant elliptical galaxy near the center; most of these ellipticals are very bright emitters of radio radiation as a result of activity around supermassive black holes at their nuclei.

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Discovery, the longest-serving orbiter in the space shuttle fleet, will be accepted into the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum collection. The space shuttle has been the icon for American spaceflight for a generation, and Discovery has flown every type of mission during its 27-year career.

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A study published in the journal Global Change Biology finds that while fertilizer has been the dominant source of nitrogen pollution in Caribbean coastal ecosystems for the past 50 years, such pollution is on the decline, thanks in part to the introduction of more advanced, environmentally responsible agricultural practices during the last decade.

The post National Museum of Natural History’s coral collection used in Caribbean agricultural and sewage pollution study appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

One of the most challenging aspects of this research is simply studying these insects as they are falling, says Yanoviak, a tropical arthropod ecologist at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Small body size, rapid descent, and the long distances that they can fall, make accurate data taking a challenge.

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New excavations in Indonesia and dating analyses by scientists at the Smithsonian and their colleagues show that modern humans never co-existed with Homo erectus.

The post Scientists show that modern humans never co-existed with <em>Homo erectus</em> appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian is hosting a series of public satellite broadcasts featuring a multinational team of researchers, engineers and archaeologists who are working in Peru on the origins and engineering of the Inka Road of South America.

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The 5.8-magnitude earthquake that shook the eastern United States on the afternoon of Tuesday, Aug. 23, caused minor damage to some of the Smithsonian's natural history collections. All public Smithsonian museums are open and have been determined safe for visitors and staff.

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Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory discovered the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. Approximately 160 million light years from Earth, the pair is the nearest known such phenomenon.

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New research shows that some old stars might be held up by their rapid spins, and when they slow down, they explode as supernovae. Thousands of these "time bombs" could be scattered throughout our Galaxy.

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The fossil represents the youngest nodosaur ever discovered, and the only known specimen of a new genus and species of dinosaur that lived approximately 110 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous Era.

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Depending on where the fish disperse from, the use of ‘stepping stones', flotsam or simply being an adult can help in the journey to find a new home.

The post Ability to raft with flotsam and use non-reef habitats helps tropical fish journey to new places, study finds appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

New observations by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, show there are significantly fewer near-Earth asteroids in the mid-size range than previously thought.

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The first DNA barcoding survey of crustaceans living on samples of dead coral taken from the Indian, Pacific and Caribbean oceans suggests that the diversity of organisms living on the world’s coral reefs—one of the most endangered habitats on Earth—is seriously underestimated.

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Astronomers are confident the Cygnus X-1 system contains a black hole, and with these latest studies they have remarkably precise values of its mass, spin, and distance from Earth.

The post New details on birth of black hole Cygnus X-1 revealed by Chandra X-ray Observatory appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

For the first time, researchers from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Migratory Bird Center analyzed how songbirds are affected by both general noise and the acoustics of hard human-made surfaces in urban areas.

The post Urban songbirds adjust melodies to adapt to life in the big city, Smithsonian scientists find appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

One problem in unraveling the mystery of quasars is that many (perhaps most) quasar nuclei seem to be surrounded by a torus of obscuring dust that makes them difficult to study.

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This composite image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (operated for NASA by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory) shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot […]

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To celebrate its 22nd anniversary in orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope has released a dramatic new image of the star-forming region 30 Doradus, also known […]

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The National Museum of Natural History will construct a new dinosaur exhibition hall made possible by a $35 million donation from David H. Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries and philanthropist.

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The only explanation for such symmetry across these vast distances, explains Smithsonian anthropologist Dennis Stanford, is that the method of creating the points was handed down from person to person.

The post 3-D imaging adds remarkable new understanding of North America’s mysterious Clovis people appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

More than 70 scientists from 9 institutions including the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, sequenced the entire genome of the butterfly genus Heliconius, a brightly colored favorite of collectors and scientists since the Victorian era.

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Recent geologic mapping of the Medusae Fossae Formation on Mars—an intensely eroded deposit near the northern edge of the cratered highlands—has revealed a wider distribution of its western component than was previously recognized.

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This image shows a 3-D scan of the type specimen of Odobenocetops, the walrus whale, in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The skull […]

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A new study has unveiled how the tiny hummingbird adapts to flying in heavy rain.

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A new study finds that since 1985, half of Australia's Great Barrier Reef coral has died.

The post Smithsonian marine biologist Nancy Knowlton discusses Great Barrier Reef coral dieoff on PBS NewsHour appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A specimen recently pulled from deep in the southwest Atlantic may represent a new species of squid, say scientist who have studied the animal’s unusual morphology. But then again, it may not…

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A rare Longman’s beaked whale found stranded on the Hawaiian island of Maui in 2010 has scientists in Hawaii on the alert for a deadly disease known as morbillivirus which can lead to high mortality rates in dolphins and other marine mammals.

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Vampire Squid Illustration, 1889 This Smithsonian Snapshot celebrates the Halloween season with this 1889 scientific illustration of a vampire squid from Smithsonian Libraries. Its jet-black […]

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Deep observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory of Cygnus OB2 have been used to detect the X-ray emission from the hot outer atmospheres, or coronas, of young stars in the cluster and to probe how these great star factories form and evolve.

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Frontispiece illustration of “flies” from the 1882 book American game fishes, their habits, habitat, and peculiarities; how, when, and where to angle for them, featuring […]

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The western long-beaked echidna, one of the world's five egg-laying species of mammal, became extinct in Australia thousands of years ago…or did it?

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Using echolocation alone the bats found, identified and captured insects perched motionless and silent on the leaves of plants.

The post Common tropical bat uses echolocation with precision previously considered impossible, new experiments reveal appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Marc Fries, a research associate in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, answers some basic questions about meteorites.

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Cheeseburgers. Ice cream. French fries. These are a few of the culprits, doctors warn us, responsible for atherosclerosis, a disease commonly known as hardening of […]

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Rope, golf balls, sweat pants, bottles and aluminum cans are a few of the discarded items biologist Matt Klope says he has found inside the […]

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The impact of industrial fishing on coastal ecosystems has been studied for many years. But how it affects food webs in the open ocean―a vast […]

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Plato, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, described music and astronomy as “sister sciences” that both encompass harmonious motions, whether of instrument strings or celestial objects. […]

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