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Cool Finds

A compressed view of the entire visible sky from the Pan-STARRS1 Observatory

New Research

Massive Survey Catalogues the Night Sky

Over four years, the Pan-STARRS telescope collected 2 petabytes of photos of the night sky, creating the most complete astronomical atlas yet

Tens of thousands of sticky notes were used to create the communal artwork/therapy session.

Cool Finds

New Yorkers’ Post-Election Post-its Will Be Preserved

Subway Therapy captured a city’s outpouring of emotion. Now, the notes New Yorkers left behind will be archived

New York's shrine to the performing arts has never seen a dancer quite like this.

Cool Finds

A Huge Bronze Hippo in a Tutu Is Coming to Lincoln Center

Her name is Hippo Ballerina, and she’s sure to make theatergoers do a double-take

Cool Finds

Check Out NASA’s Picks for This Year’s Best Images of Earth

From sunsets to city lights, the images capture the beauty of our ever-changing planet

Uniformed Letter Carrier with Child in Mailbag

Smithsonian Podcast

A Brief History of Children Sent Through the Mail

In the early days of the parcel post, some parents took advantage of the mail in unexpected ways

Dwarf minke whale

New Research

Unidentified Complex Sound From Earth’s Deepest Trench May Be New Whale Call

Known as the Western Pacific Biotwang, researchers believe it may be a previously unrecoreded call from a dwarf minke whale

Phuket Horned Tree Agamid, Acanthosaura phuketensis, found in Phuket,Thailand

Cool Finds

Meet the Klingon Newt, Ziggy Stardust Snake—Two of the 163 New Species Discovered in the Mekong

A new reports details the dozens of new animal and plant species scientists found in Southeast Asia’s Greater Mekong in 2015

Cool Finds

Each Christmas, Iceland’s Yule Cat Takes Fashion Policing to the Extreme

The Jólakötturinn will make you thankful for those Christmas socks

South Texas is among the most inhospitable places to cross the border—and is now the most popular.

Cool Finds

New Database Helps Families ID People Who Died Crossing the Border

I Have a Name/Yo Tengo Nombre offers a devastating glimpse of those who are gone—and a glimmer of hope to those who want to find them

A jar of the world's pinkest pink paint pigment.

Cool Finds

This Artist Is the Only Person Banned From Using the World’s Pinkest Pink

It’s a brightly colored revenge for restricting the world’s blackest black

Not the largest wave ever recorded

Cool Finds

Sixty-Two-Foot Wave Sets New Record

A sensor in the North Atlantic detected a set of waves averaging over six stories tall, setting a new record for a buoy-measured wave

Glad tidings! There's a new Christmas song in town.

Researchers Found a Long-Lost Christmas Song

“Crown Winter With Green” has some serious archival cred—and a sad story to tell

New Research

Fossil Footprints Show Movements of Our Early Ancestors

The trace fossils found in Tanzania spurred a debate about how early hominids lived

The Russian Front of World War II as of 1942.

Cool Finds

The CIA Is Celebrating Its Cartography Division’s 75th Anniversary by Sharing Declassified Maps

Decades of once-secret maps are now freely available online

This colorful pattern is actually the cells inside a zebrafish embryo.

Cool Finds

Prize-Winning Videos Capture Mesmerizing, Microscopic World

Everything looks cooler when it’s viewed through the lens of a microscope

Men smoke pipes and drink on the London streets. Booth's police notebooks reveal the everyday habits of Londoners.

Cool Finds

Explore the Seedy Reality of a London Long Gone

Charles Booth explored the poorest parts of England’s capital—and changed the way social scientists think about the world

A panoramic map of the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, MO.

Cool Finds

The Library of Congress Is Putting Its Map Collection on the Map

A new partnership with the Digital Public Library of America will put three major LOC map collections online

Artist's rendering of KITE

Cool Finds

Japan Testing “Space Tether” to Knock Junk Out of Orbit

The KITE experiment will use a half-mile long cable to guide some of the 500,000 chunks of space junk out of orbit

It isn't pretty, but it made history.

Cool Finds

Someone Paid $46,000 for a Bunch of Mold

Its discovery was an accident, but this scientific sample changed the course of medicine forever

Cool Finds

The Ancient Origins of Apple Cider

The classic fall drink has a boozy history going back thousands of years

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