Description: Throughout May and June, we are inviting people throughout the Smithsonian to talk about photography and astronomy. This is the first installment from Megan Watzke, Press Officer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Most people think of a telescope as something in a backyard or the dome at the local planetarium. And it’s true that many telescopes are designed to
Description: Today, three new images of starbursts and colliding galaxies from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray team were uploaded to the Smithsonian's Flickr Commons stream.
Description: The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center is located near Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, on land donated by Robert Forest in 1965. Initially a field station, the center focused on environmental research, including the work of the Radiation Biology Laboratory. Today, the Center studies links between coastal zone land and water ecosystems. History of the Smithsonian
Description: [caption id="attachment_3071" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Spiral Galaxy Messier 81 (M81), 2003, Spitzer Space Telescope / IRAC, NASA / JPL-Caltech / S. Willner, Harvard-Smithsonian CfA"][/caption] You may in fact be, or just feel like, a big shot down here on earth. But, ever since airborne cameras started to photograph our little planet from above, and once they