Smithsonian.com

Click photo to view the 24-hour video Webcast (download time depends on connection speed).

Happy International Year of Astronomy! And how’s this for a celebration: A live 24-hour video Webcast called “Around the World in 80 Telescopes,” a digital travel around (and off) the globe to find out what’s happening at research observatories. The Webcast began last night and will continue through April 4th.

The Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics will have three of its facilities featured. The Submillimeter Array (see video above) in Hawaii, the Magellan Telescopes, (tonight, 11:00 p.m. EDT) in Chile, and the MMT Observatory (tomorrow, 2:50 a.m. EDT) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In "Escape the Museum" by Majesco Entertainment, a curator tries to save museum artifacts after an earthquake.

Susan Anderson may be the first curator to star in a video game. She can’t pack heat like Lara Croft Tomb Raider, but Anderson is a different kind of heroine. Her strength is her intelligence and it comes in handy after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake devastates the fictional National Museum of History. Falling debris knocks her unconscious, and when she awakes, Anderson is alone in the midst of ruined exhibits.

This is the premise of “Escape the Museum,” by Majesco Entertainment, coming out today for the Wii system and home computers. You are in the shoes of Anderson, who must outsmart the museum security system to save art and artifacts from the now unstable displays. The game is in the “hidden object” genre, which means a heavy emphasis on puzzle solving.

I asked George Donovan, President of Gogii Games, the producers of “Escape the Museum,” whether they had the Smithsonian in mind during development.

JC: What is the National Museum of History based on? Are there any real pieces of artwork or specimens in it?

GD: We created the Museum based on a number of periods in history and research, not necessarily a certain museum. One thing that is mentioned in the game by name was [the hammer of German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann]. The player uses it to complete one of the puzzles.

JC: Video games are dominated by fantastical settings such as post-apocalyptic worlds, floating kingdoms and the stars. Why choose a museum as a game setting?

GD: In hidden object games one of the main concerns when choosing a theme is variety of locations. With a museum we were able to make every room or exhibit a unique and different experience for the player. Never the same content twice. That is why we are making the sequel now.

A scene from "Escape the Museum."

JC: Who is the curator heroine based on? What kind of personality does she have?

GD: She’s based on our target audience, a 35- plus year-old female puzzle solver and someone who is compassionate and uses their brain to solve complex puzzles.

JC: Do you think this game will motivate players to go to real-life museums?

GD: I hope so. Maybe they saw an exhibit or some artifacts in the game and want to get a closer look. So many topics are covered, from dinosaurs to space.

JC: Are there any surprises to making a video game like this?

GD: I’m always surprised how much I learn myself from researching scenes and ideas. Sometimes I get lost reading Wikipedia for hours on a topic.

Courtesy of Smithsonian Archives

I look at this photograph and I immediately start reminiscing about many a fun-filled afternoon playing Hungry Hungry Hippos, bopping the backsides of plastic technicolor hippopotami in an attempt to eat more white plastic marbles than my opponents. I can totally see the guy on the left going, “Hey, what’re all these marbles doing in here?”

Or can’t you just imagine these guys standing around—perhaps a little sloshed—singing, “Oh I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. Only a hippopotamus will do!”

Or, “Didn’t I see you in Fantasia?”

But there again, my ideas may be coming from FAR left field.

What words come to mind when you see this image? Create captions of your very own in the comments area below to enter in our second caption writing contest. Our first was a wild success.

Be creative! You have until noon on Wednesday, March 4 to send in your ideas.

The winner—and the original caption information for the image—will be announced here on the blog later that afternoon.

The twin-spot triplefin, a species of blenny found near Malpelo Island in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. Credit: Ross Robertson.

Blennies aren’t the prettiest of nature’s creatures. About as long as a roll of quarters, with big eyes and a gaping mouth, the fish are loved by scientists for their ecology more than their beauty. With over 800 species across the oceans, they are one of the world’s most diverse fish families. By studying differences in blenny color, shape, size, location and diet, scientists can theorize how and why each member of the species branched off from the rest of the group.

With so many fish in the sea, keeping track of all this information can be tricky. To help, scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute developed interactive tools to map diversity in all fishes. Their first Web-based information system, created late last year, lists the nearly 1,300 species of fish of the isolated Tropical Eastern Pacific ocean range, which extends from the coasts of Southern California to Northern Peru and as far west as the Galapagos.

“The area acts as a laboratory to study evolutionary change that we know happened, [after the formation of the isthmus of Panama divided the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans], approximately 2.8 million years ago,” says Smithsonian scientist D. Ross Robertson, who co-created the research tool with Gerald Allen of Conservation International.

Robertson and Allen, who in 1992 first described the twin-spot triplefin blenny, (pictured above), are now diving in the waters around the Caribbean to collect and photograph local fish for their next Website. “Photographs of live or freshly collected fishes are important aids for identification,” Robertson says. “And systems such as this can incorporate far more than a book can.”

Although the website is designed to help scientists identify fish species, spot patterns of diversity and plan conservation efforts, anyone can enjoy the ‘Random Images‘ tab, which cycles through the over 2,800 pictures of tropical fish found on the site. If a flounder or eel catches your eye, more general reader information can be found at the Encyclopedia of Life or Wikipedia.

Portrait of Jack Nicholson by Martin Schoeller, courtesy of National Portrait Gallery

When actor Jack Nicholson showed up to his photo shoot wearing a red clown nose, Martin Schoeller did what any photographer would do and snapped the picture. When the entertainment value wore off, the portrait artist asked Nicholson to remove the nose. The moment Schoeller then captured now hangs in the “Portraiture Now: Feature Photography” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Schoeller, a staff photographer at the New Yorker, discusses the stories behind his portraits, which include subjects like Nicholson, actress Angelina Jolie and President-elect Barack Obama, in an audio slideshow featured this week on the magazine’s Web site.

Schoeller’s commentary provides an interesting perspective on these famous faces. “He looked so much younger then,” he says of Obama, who Schoeller first photographed in 2004 while the President-elect was running for Senate, “He already has aged so much in the last four years from the campaign trail.”

The other voice featured in the slideshow is a second New Yorker staff photographer, Steve Pyke, whose black-and-white portraits of subjects like actor Sir Ian McKellen and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger are also in the Portrait Gallery exhibit.

“Portraiture Now: Feature Photography” will run through September 27, 2009. View the exhibit online at the National Portrait Gallery’s site.