Why 'Slingshot' Around The Moon? And Other Artemis II Questions | The Brian Lehrer Show | WNYC Astrophysicist and science educator Jackie Faherty answers question the Artemis II mission.

ICYMI, @amnh.org's Jackie Faherty on the Artemis II mission:

www.wnyc.org/story/why-sl...

Earth Day at the Museum: April 18, 2026 | AMNH Join us for a full day of family-friendly activities devoted to preserving planet Earth.

You'll be able to:

🔎Bring an object or specimen to the Museum for identification by Museum scientists.

📖Join nature-themed storytimes for young readers at 11 am and 3 pm.

🎨Create take-home crafts, including art on plantable seed paper that can be placed in soil to grow flowers.

And more!👇

Wide shot of the Museum's Gilder Center Atrium.

A Museum scientist, holding a biological specimen in a jar, explains the animal's features to a child seated across from him.

Wide shot of the Museum’s Hall of Ocean Life. Visitors are gathered at various activity tables on the floor beneath the life-size Blue Whale model.

A man on a stage reads a storybook to an audience in the Museum's Gilder Center.

Mark your calendars for EarthFest on Saturday, 4/18! Join our annual all-ages festival celebrating planet Earth with hands-on activities, science trivia, specimen Identification Stations, & more!

EarthFest is free for Members or with any Museum admission: bit.ly/4bXACq1

📸: A. Keding & D. Kim/©AMNH

150 Million Years of Dinosaur Evolution #datavisualization YouTube video by American Museum of Natural History

In this data visualization, see every dinosaur fossil known to science on a map! Look for where & when your favorite dinosaurs appear. See when birds like Archaeopteryx evolved & which groups of dinosaurs dominated the landscape from one time period to the next: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ_i...

Plan Your Visit | American Museum of Natural History Start here: find out how to get to the Museum, get tickets, and map out your must-see exhibits.

Plan your visit: amnh.link/4lHPM4s

Let us know what else you would see if you only had an hour at the Museum!

Everything you’ve seen is included with General Admission. If you have more time to spend, check out our ticketed exhibitions in the Gilder Center, including the Butterfly Vivarium and Invisible Worlds.

🥚🐣 Did you know? The flightless Elephant Bird’s eggs are 7x larger than those of an Ostrich! Step into the Museum’s Ornithology Collections to discover the biggest and smallest eggs.

A photo of a pygmy rabbit. The rabbit has grayish-brown fur and short rounded ears that are perked up. It has round black eyes and is looking toward the left.

Meet the smallest rabbit in North America, the pygmy rabbit! On average, it weighs just under 1 lb (.45 kg) with a body length of 11 in (28 cm). It has a small range across the northwestern region of the U.S., where it inhabits deserts & shrubland.

Photo: Paul Carter, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

Looking up at the underside of the big blue whale

Hey there @amnh.org 👋

Hey, hey!🐋👋

A photo of an elephant skull. It is brownish in color and missing its tusks.

What you see before you is a skull of a cyclops—the large central hole is its lone eye socket. Happy April Fools' Day! The myth of the 1-eyed giant Cyclops may have been fueled by discoveries of fossils of ancient elephants, with the central nasal cavity mistaken for an eye socket.

Presentations will be held at 11 am, noon, 2 pm, and 3 pm, with the noon session in Spanish. This program is free with any Museum admission!

For the first time in more than 50 yrs, humans are headed to the Moon! Join Associate Curator Jackie Faherty & colleagues in the Cullman Hall of the Universe today for special 10-min presentations & Q&A sessions on the Moon’s origins, the Artemis II mission, & the future of human space exploration.

A photo of a sun bear looking at the viewer. The bear is surrounded by greenery. It is black in color, with a tan snout and a gold marking at its chest.

Meet the world’s smallest bear. Weighing in around 103 lbs (47 kg), the sun bear is about half the size of an American black bear! It's an excellent climber, sometimes building nests in the treetops as much as 128 ft (40 m) from the ground, where it can snooze in peace.

Behold the western pygmy possum! This dainty marsupial typically weighs ~0.5 oz (14 g)—that's about as much as a AA battery! It inhabits treetops in forests throughout parts of Australia. As a nectarivore, it mainly feeds on plant nectar.

Behold the western pygmy possum! This dainty marsupial typically weighs ~0.5 oz (14 g)—that's about as much as a AA battery! It inhabits treetops in forests throughout parts of Australia. As a nectarivore, it mainly feeds on plant nectar.
Photo: Donna Belder, CC BY 4.0, iNaturalist

A photo of a jungle cat crouched among foliage. The cat is tan in color with light-colored eyes. It has large ears.

Meet the jungle cat. This feline prefers wetland habitats in parts of North Africa & Asia. Though not strictly nocturnal, it’s most commonly spotted at night and can travel up to 3.7 mi (6 km) in a single evening. Photo: Wildlife SOS, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

Sperm whale calf Aurora from Unit A swims alongside her mother, Lady Oracle. Dominica, Caribbean Sea.

Members of a sperm whale family Unit A , Aurora, Atwood, and Accra, near the Caribbean island of Dominica, are part of a clan that's culturally distinct from others. Each clan communicates in its own dialect of click patterns, like Morse code.

Female sperm whales from Unit A holding the newborn sperm whale calf above water until it is able to swim on its own

🚨Science news! A team including Museum researchers has published the most comprehensive documentation of a sperm whale birth ever recorded. To learn more, check out our latest blog post: bit.ly/4bCYZJr

Photos 1–2: Brian J. Skerry/National Geographic
Photo 3: @projectceti.bsky.social

A photo of attendees seated in the Museum’s Kaufmann Theater. The lights are dimmed, and a film is being screened on the large screen.

🎥 The Museum’s Margaret Mead Film Festival kicks off on Friday, May 1! This three-day celebration will present storytelling and documentary films from diverse voices near and far.

🎟️ Weekend passes are now available! Details: bit.ly/3NJa3eQ

Photo: Alvaro Keding/ ©AMNH

A photo of a giant armadillo walking toward the viewer. The animal has a plated, gray colored carapace which extends in the shape of a triangle onto the animal’s head. It has long, curved claws and a stout body.

Just how giant is the giant armadillo? Unlike other armadillos—which can roll up to defend themselves from foes—this species’ is too big to hide inside its carapace. It can reach lengths of 3.9 ft (1.2 m) and weights of ~110 lbs (50 kg)!
Photo: luiz_alberto_santos, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

A photo of a fossilized trilobite. The animal is oblong and multi-segmented, and somewhat resembles a horseshoe crab.

This Trilobite Tuesday, let’s head to Oklahoma’s Henryhouse Formation. The mid-sized trilobite Anasobella asper, pictured here, is among the rarest found at this site. No more than a dozen complete, articulated examples of this 1.2-in- (3-cm-) long Silurian cheirurid have ever been uncovered.

A photo of a human hand touching a giant puffball. The mushroom is huge, round, and white, and resembles a lump of mozzarella cheese.

Behold the giant puffball! This fungus sits on lawns & meadows, absorbing nutrients from the soil. Its trillions of tiny spores emerge as a puff of "smoke" when the mushroom is disturbed. Photo: sandiphillips, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

A photo of a Colugo clinging to a tree. The animal is greenish in color with large eyes, small ears, and noticeable wing-like flaps of skin extending from its hands to its body.

Meet the Sunda flying lemur! This tree-dweller, which glides through the air using a skin membrane between its neck and limbs, was once thought to be related to primates or bats. Scientists now place it on its own branch of the evolutionary tree.
Photo: henrik_frietsch, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

Together, they examine how AI is transforming scientific practice, altering geopolitical power, challenging legal and ethical frameworks, and raising fundamental questions about human agency and control.

The Rise and Reckoning of AI | 2026 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate YouTube video by American Museum of Natural History

In this year's Asimov Debate, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, convened a uniquely interdisciplinary panel of pioneers to examine AI’s impact on society. Watch the full debate on our YouTube channel.👇

A photo of a field full of vibrant tulips. They stretch as far as the eye can see.

Spring has sprung! 🌷Today is the first day of spring and that means you’ll probably spot this popular flower soon… the tulip! There are now 100+ species of tulip growing around the world, along with thousands of hybridized varieties.
Photo: lauraseidanova, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

A photo of a striped hyena. The animal is primarily a yellowish white with stripes. It somewhat resembles a canine, and has fluffy hair.

Meet the striped hyena! When disturbed, this critter can double its size by raising the hairs on its back to intimidate foes. Though it's a scavenger that feeds primarily on carrion, it supplements its diet with fruits, seeds, and leaves.
Photo: Tisha Mukherjee, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

A photo of an Amazon milk frog on a large leaf. The frog is blueish in color with gray on its back and bands of gray on its arms and legs.

You don’t want to dip your cookies in the Amazon milk frog’s “milk.” This amphibian’s common name refers to the poisonous, milky substance it secretes when under threat! This nocturnal frog inhabits the rainforests of South America.
Photo: Seth Ames, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

Bony Inner Ears Offer Clues to Lizard Evolution | AMNH Scientists hoping to reconstruct how extinct lizards and snakes lived have turned their attention to the inner ear.

🚨Science news! Recent research led by Meghan Forcellati, a comparative biology Ph.D. student in the Museum’s Richard Gilder Graduate School, has uncovered new clues about reptile evolution by studying the bony encasements of the inner ears of living lizards and snakes.

🔦But with the help of UV lighting, as seen in the lower portion of the image, the segments of those antennae become much more apparent! Such soft-part preservation is rare in trilobites from this locality.

A photo compilation of a fossilized trilobite. The top image is a dark trilobite fossil protruding from the surface of a sand-colored stone. It has an oval-shaped body with a rounded head and a spiny carapace. The lower image is a close-up photo of the same trilobite's head under UV lighting. A subtle markings of antennae are visible in the stone above the trilobite's head.

Welcome back to Trilobite Tuesday! Pictured is a 3-in- (7.6-cm-) long Nevadia weeksi from the Lower Cambrian of the Western United States. At a first glance, you might not notice the two prominent antennae preserved on this trilobite.