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Category: Natural and Physical Sciences

Great Moon Hoax Continues: Lunarians Discovered

Moon Hoax image from Italian Newspaper
Moon Hoax image from Italian Newspaper depicting missionaries aiding the Lunarians.

The Great Moon Hoax continues. During the following days, Herschel’s new found discoveries were astonishing New Yorkers as the story spread like wild fire and was starting to find an audience beyond New York City itself including a number of scientist some of whom bought into the story, while others were fascinated but not so easily convinced. As a matter of fact, several scientists from Yale traveled to New York City in search of the truth behind the report. Back to the story at hand, Herschel’s subsequent nights of observations found him discovering even more astonishing flora, fauna, and geological marvels. 

The Moon Hoax of 1835: Great Astronomical Discoveries

Man Bats on the Moon
Man Bats Discovered on the Moon

During this week in 1835, an incredible story broke in the Sun Newspaper, New York City, which reported that the famed astronomer Sir John Herschel had made Great Astronomical Discoveries. While cataloging and mapping nebulae in the night sky at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, Herschel trained his reportedly hyper powerful telescope on the Moon. The specifics of the telescope was covered in the first day’s article. 

Description of adorable new mammal in Smithsonian Research Online!

In case you missed the news last week, a Smithsonian scientist has identified a new mammal species, one that is particularly fuzzy and cute. Meet the olinguito!

We are pleased to tell you that the paper describing the species, first published in the open access journal ZooKeys, can be found in the Libraries’ Digital Repository .

Olinguito by Mark Gurney
Olinguito. Photo by Mark Gurney

Botany, Horticulture and Biodiversity for Intern Adriana Marroquin

adriana01This post was written by Adriana Marroquin, intern in the Botany-Horticulture Library as well as the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

I’ve been an intern at the Smithsonian Botany-Horticulture library since February and am a little over halfway done with my time here. A Maryland native, I hold a Bachelors of Fine Arts in writing, literature and publishing from Emerson College, and recently earned an Masters of Library Science from the University of Maryland. Previously, I worked as a research assistant at the Harvard Forest paleoecology lab, a library assistant at the Harvard Botany Libraries, and a bibliographic data intern at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Central Library.